The trouble is when people read about authors, they don't feel compelled to read the authors' work.

When you feel homesick,’ he said, ‘just look up. Because the moon is the same wherever you go.

Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.

The books I loved in childhood - the first loves - I’ve read so often that I’ve internalized them in some really essential way: they are more inside me now than out.

The Little Friend is a long book. It's also completely different from my first novel: different landscape, different characters, different use of language and diction, different approach to story.

Sometimes you can do all the right things and not succeed. And that's a hard lesson of reality.

Taking on challenging projects is the way that one grows and extends one's range as a writer, one's technical command, so I consider the time well-spent

It is is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially.

I believe, in a funny way, the job of the novelist is to be out there on the fringes and speaking for an experience that has not really been spoken for.

Does such a thing as "the fatal flaw," that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature?

Criticism at the wrong time, even if it's legitimate criticism, can be seriously damaging and make the writer lose faith in what he's doing. It's the timing that's all-important.

If you can dream it, you can do it. Always remember that this whole thing was started with a dream and a mouse.

But I tended not to date men who ever showed up for me.

Little things spell LOVE. Beware the spouse or marriage that places a premium on expensive gifts and 'toys.

When the man who knows all about the fruit fly chromosomes finds himself sitting next to an authority on Beowulf, there may be an uneasy silence.

It's a falsehood to state that francophone communities are thriving.

I want to be able to say that a rap career could be ten albums.

Not once in six years did I make it to the office by 9 on the dot.

I feel that if I establish the world or the premise from the first line, then I can get the reader to come with me where I want her to go.

When you get ready to vote, make sure you know what you are doing.

If the challenge is far beyond their skill level, they tend to get frustrated; if it's far below their skill level, they tend to get bored. Leaders need to strike the right balance.