Yes, I did try acting when I was in high school and I was terrible at it. So I definitely have had the experience of being bad at artistic endeavor..

That was one of the reasons I became a writer - I never really had that many friends. I would read a lot, and listen to music. And that was my life..

The writer has to take risks and go somewhere full of mystery and possibility for the novel to deepen over the years it takes to write it..

In order to be a living, breathing thing, a novel has to be failed in some kind of way. Or at least that's how I keep writing them..

I am always trying to do something new and different. The first step is curiosity, questions. You pay attention to what fascinates you. If you can't ….

There's lots of things that can't make it in the world that are worth making. There are lots of great artists who never make it, there are lots of gr….

Your memories from your early childhood seem to have such purchase on your emotions. They are so concrete..

All roads lead to Wall Street, but we feel the effects of Wall Street on every street corner. Certainly in Syracuse, N.Y., where I live..

I like to buy books for the kids in my family. I guess that's why they call me the 'mean' aunt..

The writer has to be brave, I think..

We exist because of suburbia. Suburbia is a freak’s dreamworld, a world of extra rooms upstairs and long, lazy afternoons with no interference. A pla….

Memory is not particularly linear - it is associative, repetitive, subjective and porous. But the writer needs to convey disorder and dysfunction wit….

I am a great procrastinator. When the writing is going really well, the laundry piles up..

I try to write about how we live today, how we use language, technology, our bodies..

Although a great restaurant experience must include great food, a bad restaurant experience can be achieved through bad service alone. Ideally, servi….

A good novel should be deeply unsettling - its satisfactions should come from its authenticity and its formal coherence. We must feel something cruci….

Occupy Wall Street means making Wall Street and the corporate power elite understand that the people affected by the binge of unregulated greed are n….

My teaching exists in a different part of my brain. However, I am lucky enough to teach very smart graduate students..

The issue isn't, Am I good enough? No. The issue is, Do I not have any other choice? Will and desire don't matter. Ability doesn't matter. Need is th….

The novel is about, for me, sustained and organized looking. I do think that people have a hunger for a sustained engagement, that concentration that….

I don't have a lot of skills, but one thing I can do is, I can compartmentalize. I can make that a little world that I can go back to, so I can be a ….