I think that if people are instructed about anything, it should be about the nature of cruelty. And about why people behave so cruelly to each other.….

Were it not for Occam's Razor, which always demands simplicity, I'd be tempted to believe that human beings are more influenced by distant causes tha….

Structure is one of the things that I always hope will reveal itself to me..

You can be interested in a Jane Smiley novel whether or not anyone says a word. She enters into her characters thoughts with great understanding and ….

I have to have a character worth caring about. I tend not to start writing books about people I don't have a lot of sympathy for because I'm just goi….

The world is divided between kids who grow up wanting to be their parents and those like us, who grow up wanting to be anything but. Neither group ev….

I told him the truth, that I loved him and didn't regret anything about our lives together. But do we ever 'tell the truth, the whole truth, and noth….

My God, he couldn't help thinking, how terrible it is to be that age, to have emotions so near the surface that the slightest turbulence causes them ….

One of the odd things about middle age, he concluded, was the strange decisions a man discovers he's made by not really making them, like allowing fr….

At the risk of appearing disingenuous, I don't really think of myself as 'writing humor.' I'm simply reporting on the world I observe, which is frequ….

HBO is really famous for hiring good people and staying out of their way until they ask for help, or need it. And that reputation is earned..

Stories worked much the same way . . . A false note at the beginning was much more costly than one nearer the end because early errors were part of t….

A short story is something that I think can be intuited and envisioned and held in your mind almost at once..