A book, at the same time, also has to do with what I call a buzz in the head. It's a certain kind of music that I start hearing. It's the music of th….

When I start, I have a feeling for the characters, and maybe the shape of the story. Sometimes I might even have the last sentence in mind. But, no b….

When you're young, you keep reading new writers and you keep changing your mind about how you ought to sound..

I do not repeat conversations that I can't remember. And it's something that irritates me a great deal, because I think most memoirs are false novels..

Let me tell you, there's no better medicine than a friendly card game for sloughing off the cares of a workaday world..

No book includes the entire world. It's limited. And so it doesn't seem like an aesthetic compromise to have to do that. There's so much other materi….

You think it will never happen to you, that it cannot happen to you, that you are the only person in the world to whom none of these things will ever….

I see myself as anybody, as everybody; I'm not just telling the story of my life to give the reader a picture of who I am..

The tone of every book is slightly different; there's a music that each has that is distinct from all the others..

When a person is lucky enough to live inside a story, to live inside an imaginary world, the pains of this world disappear. For as long as the story ….

Our lives carry us along in ways we cannot control, and almost nothing stays with us. It dies when we do, and death is something that happens to us e….

Reason and memory are nearly always at odds..

If the world weren't such a beautiful place, we might all turn into cynics.