Writer

The language of the Catholic Church - the liturgy, the prayer, the gospels - was in many ways my first poetry.

Those of us who know the transporting wonder of a reading life know that it little matters where we are when we talk about books or meet authors or bemoan the state of publishing because when we read, we are always inside, sheltered in that interior room, that clean, well-lighted, timeless place that is the written word.

A tendency to make metaphorical connections is an occupational hazard for those of us who write.

I was the youngest; I had two imperious older brothers - I didn't get to often complete sentences at the dinner table. So writing was a way of saying what nobody asked me to say.

I'm interested in characters who should know better, who know they should give up, move on, accept life as it is, with all its constraints - life, death, time - but don't.

I read a little bit of nonfiction and a lot of poetry. I think of poetry as my shot of whiskey when I don't have time to savor a whole bottle of wine.

I wouldn't want to tweet to anyone who would be interested in my tweets.

Any fiction writer who assumes that a character is typical no doubt runs the risk of stumbling into cliche and stereotype.

I'm a coastal person. I grew up in Long Island and lived in San Diego. I felt landlocked in Pittsburgh. Psychically, it just wasn't the place for me.

Any adjective you put before the noun 'writer' is going to be limiting in some way. Whether it's feminist writer, Jewish writer, Russian writer, or whatever.

Family dynamics are true over time, across generations and different cultures.

I'm writing all the time. I tend to work on at least two books simultaneously. I'll spend time with one, and then I'll spend time with the other. Finishing takes whatever time it takes.

A perfect poem you can't pin down and say, 'This is exactly what it meant to me.' It's not a self-help manual.

I've always believed you go to literature to find the shared human experience, not the categorized human experience.

I think 'Charming Billy' ultimately is a novel about faith and what we believe in and, above all, what we choose to believe in.

I was born in Brooklyn, but I never lived there.

No one looks at a baby and says, 'You are going to be a great novelist, and you really need to start writing now.' Something in us says: 'This is what I must do.'

For immigrant generations especially, family is the first structure, or shelter, for a people who are in exile.

I believe that the interior life is the same for all of us. And because they're steeped in faith, Irish-American Catholics are a people who have a language for the examined life.

For me, having characters who are part of a faith then allows me to talk about how that faith either works or fails them without having to attack the institution.