Stories without endings can do nothing but go on forever, and to be caught in one means that you must die before your part in it is played out..

I believe that every artist, in one way or another, is a wounded person. It's not natural to make art..

In my later novels, I systematically used the convention, and then a moment came - when did it come? With The Book of Illusions, maybe - I thought, I….

As my friend George Oppen once said to me about getting old: what a strange thing to happen to a little boy..

[Charles] Reznikoff was in between faiths, in between worlds... a double, hyphenated American. I think it probably goes deeper than that..

Having made films, I know very well that the scope of the average 90- to 120-minute movie is about the same narrative heft as a long short story or a….

The story is not in the words; it's in the struggle..

In a sense I am able to interrogate myself, address myself from that slight distance and enter a kind of dialogical relationship with myself. Because….

For one reason or another, I became a passionate reader when I was very little. As soon as I could read, I wanted to read..

There is a double rhythm in all human beings. We are binary beings - two arms, two legs, two eyes, two ears. Two legs for walking. And the heartbeat ….

No one can cross the boundary into another -- for the simple reason that no one can gain access to himself.

My characters, I find them as I'm writing. It's quite incredible how fully realized they are in my mind, how many details I know about each of them..

The world is so unpredictable. Things happen suddenly, unexpectedly. We want to feel we are in control of our own existence. In some ways we are, in ….

It's an ethical pact I've made with myself and with the reader - not to invent. And when I can't remember, I say I can't remember. I'm just appalled ….

It's a mind going over things, revisiting things, maybe trying to refine the original perception. You have to keep going a thing over in order to mak….

The truth of the story lies in the details..

I think that's what turns young men and women into writers - the happiness you discover living in books..

Just the fact that Hilary Clinton won the popular vote by such a large number gives some validation to the impulse to stand firm. If we don't, I thin….

There are often references to childhood, but they're rarely the focus of the [my] novels..

There are two kinds of typical days. There's the typical day when I'm writing a novel, and there's the typical day when I'm not..

Most people just want to be part of the world, they want to live, love, and enjoy themselves - to take part in the world around them. Whereas artists….