Updike worked this way, and I just kinda borrowed it from him. So the memoir will be relief from novel writing for a moment.

I have worked really hard to defy categorization, to break down a taxonomy whenever it comes my way.

Impotence, fetishism, bisexuality, and bondage are all facts of life, and our fiction should reflect that.

The past was so past it hurt.

I think literature is best when it's voicing what we would prefer not to talk about.

I am in Boston right now, in fact, to do work at the New England Historical Genealogical Library, where I'm trying to finish up tracing my lineage back to the seventeenth century.

I suppose I should say that I treasure blasphemy, as a faith of the highest order.

Genre is a bookstore problem, not a literary problem.

I judged about a zillion awards this year so Ive been reading a lot of books that just came out.

It's also true, however, that having conquered the regional writer ghetto, I am now intent on conquering the nationalist writer ghetto and moving out into the world more.

I'm trying to read more dead people because I keep having to read stuff for juries and so forth.

Life makes no sense if you have to tolerate endless lies. I will never accept this system, which is built on lies, i will not stop my fight against this junta.

Can we learn to become more learning-oriented individually and collectively, rather than 'I know' oriented?

None of us feels the true love of God till we realize how wicked we are. But you can't teach people that - they have to learn by experience.

The man who sees little always sees less than there is to see; the man who hears badly always hears something more than there is to hear.

There's no real alternative to what there is.

It's fun to be debaucherous and the worst version of yourself.

Plotinus is a neo-Platonist, so he would encourage us to go back to Plato.

If you're in love and there's that chemistry, that's what it's all about.

Learn the lick, but learn FROM the lick.

Strong reasons make strong actions.