If you could have a book called My Favorite Six Stories, I don't think I'd have trouble doing that.

People forget years and remember moments.

When I was teaching at Harvard in the 1970s, I went to Project Incorporated in Cambridge and took photography classes. I didn't even know how to aim the camera in those days.

Because I don’t work with an outline, writing a story is like crossing a stream, now I’m on this rock, now I’m on this rock, now I’m on this rock.

Clichés so often befall vain people.

I think almost always that what gets me going with a story is the atmosphere, the visual imagery, and then I people it with characters, not the other way around.

I don't write about things that I have the answers to or things that are very close to home. It just wouldn't be any adventure. It wouldn't have any vitality.

There is some reason, obviously, that you are drawn to your material, but the way in which you explore it might come to be quite different from what you would expect.

Nobody can assume that, to a writer, everything is off-limits.

I like a lot of Margaret Atwood, I like much of Alice Munro. Again, if you were to ask me about male writers, there's often a novel I admire, but not all of their works.

It's often been said that I'm an extremely depressing, cynical writer. I've never known what to make of that.

Peace is the byproduct of understanding in conjunction with the ability to agree or disagree in harmony

Miranda doesn't dream, she simply rests. When Miranda's eyes are at ease, her mind is at peace.

There are a lot of us, some published, some not, who think the literary life is the loveliest one possible, this life of reading and writing and corresponding. We think this life is nearly ideal.

If a thief helps a poor man out of the spoils of his thieving, we must not call that charity.

Everybody uses pop culture as a shorthand. You might make an obscure reference to Monty Python or Iron Eagle that only some people will get, but if they do it conveys a world of meaning.

We Pisces, we're a special breed.

I get really excited imagining what we can do in the future with broadband.

For me, it might sound cliche, but beauty for me really does start on the inside. It's like a state of mind, a state of love if you will. Then, whatever you can do on the outside is all like a bonus.

I don't believe a team can lead itself. I'm a big believer in vision.

We can no more enjoy life by hoping for a future result than we can enjoy music by waiting for the final note.