Novel-writing is a bit like deception. You lie as little as you possibly can. That's the way I do it, anyway.

We are in the realm not of logic but of wistfulness, and I must maintain that wistfulness is a respectable, serious condition. How, otherwise, to account for much of one's life?

Who has the courage to set right those misperceptions that bring us love?

I certainly want to continue to write in a way that's intimate. I love books where you feel you're having a romance with the writer.

If what you want to do is write, then it's madness not to do it.

Sometimes to walk in shaded parts of Manhattan is to be inserted into a Magritte: the street is night while the sky is day.

I was just a boy on a boat in the universe.

The greater the novel, the more it is apt to embody the special, non-replicable properties of the written medium.

One of the great pluses of being an immigrant is you get to start again in terms of your identity. You get to shed the narratives which cling to you.

New York interposed itself, once and for all, between me and all other places of origin.

It won't be long before we'll be deafened by the screeches of whistles being blown by whistle-blowers blowing the whistle on themselves.

If you only write when inspired, you may be a fairly decent poet, but you'll never be a novelist.

She lied to me today, " Archie said."A teenager?" Susan said with faux surprise. "Lying to an authority figure? Impossible.

Wallowing was for elephants, depressing people and depressing elephants

White middle- and upper-class men have a longer journey to go than many people.

I hear the ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppled masonry, and time one livid final flame.

I'm a naughty sweetheart.

Bid the hungry Greek go to heaven, he will go. [Lat., Graeculus esuriens in coelum, jusseris, ibit.]

Always maintain good relations with your public.

I was raised on, 'You go get a nine-to-five job, earn your pay and work your way up.

[L]et us work to rid ourselves of our attacks of over-zealousness especially when it offends against respect, esteem, and charity.