I was depressed, but that was a side issue. This was more like closing up shop, or, say, having a big garage sale, where you look at everything you'v….

In many ways, being honest about 'Huckleberry Finn' goes right to the heart of whether we can be honest about our heritage and our identity as Americ….

In the traditional urban novel, there is only survival or not. The suburban idea, the conformist idea, that agony can be seen to and cured by doctors….

I'm a natural novelist. I'm interested in the person and the group, and how they mesh. And one of the ways I don't want them to mesh is for the perso….

a bookstore is one of the few places where all the cantankerous, conflicting, alluring voices of the world co-exist in peace and order and the avid r….

But what truly horsey girls discover in the end is that boyfriends, husbands, children, and careers are the substitute-for horses.

When I went to first grade and the other children said that their fathers were farmers, I simply didn't believe them. I agreed in order to be polite,….

One of the profound effects of economics in our day is that the people with the money and the power have embraced the guilt-free, external-less, ever….

When 'The Awakening' was published it was considered so scandalous it was banned in the author's home-town library, and she herself was barred from t….

My great fear is not that I'll run out of ideas. It's that I'll run out of time..

English majors understand human nature better than economists do..

A theory of creativity is actually just a metaphor. A pool of ideas, a well of memories, a voice..

Ignorance and bloodlust have a long tradition in the United States, especially in the red states..

Trollope wrote so many novels and other works that they tend to crowd each other out..

Hungry ears are sharp ones..

A horse herd was, in its very essence, the manifestation of the expression 'It's always something..

Candy is my fuel. Ice cream, too..

Gossip. The more you talk about why people do things, the more ideas you have about how the world works..

Take naps. Often new ideas come together when you are half asleep, but you have to train yourself to remember them..

An urban novelist never minds a little decay..

Because your goal is a complete rough draft of a novel, and every rough draft, by being complete, is perfect..