I was trying to make a novel about something no one wanted to read about into something they couldn't put down or look away from.

Each source that I read, I would look through the bibliography and the footnotes, and use that as a map for the next thing I would read.

Every now and then, you find a book that feels like it was keyed to your DNA.

Everyone would tell me they couldn't identify with sexual abuse. No one says they can't identify with the tales of the Greek gods and goddesses because they don't live on Mt. Olympus.

Writers aren't born, they're made - from practice, reading, and a lot of caffeine.

I have lived for a long time inside a series of coincidences that most people would find implausible in a novel.

PhD, MFA, self-taught - the only things you must have to become a writer are the stamina to continue and a wily, cagey heart in the face of extremity, failure, and success.

Whenever people say a coincidence in a novel is implausible, I think, Do I have a story for you.

I had a naiveté that I would remember the things that I had written already, but I was getting lost in the forest of my own ideas and having to find my way out.

The myth works to make the very real things people don't want to look at visible for them.

As I get ready to buy a new computer, I'm stunned at all the many micro drafts, of different chapters and scenes and whatnot, that litter the hard drive.

If you never love, then you never lived.

Americanism is not a matter of skin or color.

I've noticed that since I've been pregnant I see babies everywhere. I love talking to them. I never used to really like kids that much. I guess it comes out of you naturally.

I've always gone out with men who wanted a cook all the time.

She needed food. Diets didn't count in a crisis.

The universal brotherhood of man is our most precious possession.

It doesn't matter what else is going on. When you walk into your arena or your - whatever you excel at, you're there to take care of the job that you have to do.

The usual criticism of a novel about an artist is that, no matter how real he is as a man, he is not real to us as an artist, since we have to take on trust the works of art he produces.

Agitate him and ascertain the pattern of his movement.

The developed world should be willing to help [Africa] and support her and make this energy affordable.