My novels aren't really generated by a single conceptual spark; it's more a process of many different elements that come together unexpectedly over a long period of time.

When you feel homesick,’ he said, ‘just look up. Because the moon is the same wherever you go.

Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.

The books I loved in childhood - the first loves - I’ve read so often that I’ve internalized them in some really essential way: they are more inside me now than out.

The Little Friend is a long book. It's also completely different from my first novel: different landscape, different characters, different use of language and diction, different approach to story.

Sometimes you can do all the right things and not succeed. And that's a hard lesson of reality.

Taking on challenging projects is the way that one grows and extends one's range as a writer, one's technical command, so I consider the time well-spent

It is is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially.

I believe, in a funny way, the job of the novelist is to be out there on the fringes and speaking for an experience that has not really been spoken for.

Does such a thing as "the fatal flaw," that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature?

Criticism at the wrong time, even if it's legitimate criticism, can be seriously damaging and make the writer lose faith in what he's doing. It's the timing that's all-important.

On Loyalty:Loyalty is warranted only when it's been earned.Misplacing loyalty is like signing blank checks.

Forgetfulness leads to exile while remembrance is the secret of redemption.

And when we saw all those cities and villages built in the water, and other great towns on dry land, and that straight and level causeway leading to Mexico, we were astounded.

A fashion victim is dressed in designer clothes from top to bottom.

(The AMA is) "just another mean trust."

How can you measure acting in inches?

I ain’t no hipster, but girl I can make your hips stir.

I'm not that good looking. That's why 'Gangnam Style' works. If someone handsome uses that phrase it's just awkward. But if someone like me uses it, it's funny.

We give our dead To the orchards And the groves. We give our dead To life.

There was a clown that tried to eat me as a boy, in my nightmares. Years later I found a clown for booking online who resembled him named Patches. Needless to say, Patches is dead now.