Author

I don't think there is such a thing as pure imagination. I think it's a combination of memory and invention.

Bausch is a wonderful storyteller. He's a mature writer who has a lot of confidence in the quality of character. He doesn't need to hook you with a sneaky plot and zany characters.

I don't want to be movie-star famous. I want to move people with my writing.

If you try to write a novel in L.A., you're a chump; everyone is speeding by, and you're driving a rickshaw.

I don't think success makes one confident. I think it has more to do with character than circumstance.

When the narrator says, 'This is a story without surprises,' most of the time, this is not what happens.

Families tend to artificially divide the world, imbuing one member with all the attributes and another with all the faults. But it's never that way.

When I write, I can become this ecstatic, crazy fellow, hearing the voices and just loosening up and letting them grow.

As I write, I try to be the character.

A novel, at least for me, cannot be visualized at one time.

I teach a 14-week semester, and one of the things I do when I have to teach literature is, for the first half hour of the class, I have the students write the beginning of a new story every week. At the end of the semester, even if they have learned nothing about literature, at least they'll have 14 beginnings that they can take with them.

I read for the sensation of becoming another person; I write for the same sensation.

I'm a Jew. I think every Jew is dark in certain ways.

The Internet is changing American fiction - and I don't mean in some kind of metaphysical way.

In medical school, you're taught to write in this convoluted, Latinate way. I knew the vocabulary as well as anyone, but I would write kidney instead of nephric. I insisted on using English.

No one knows why books do well.

I finished 'America America,' and I knew I had to write another book, not just for personal reasons but because I had a contract.

Point of view gets me. If I can feel like a character rather than a reader, I'll read that book.

Your first book is kind of a labor of ignorance. You don't realize the difficulty of it. Your second book is sort of a labor of fear. Then you sort of either hit a stride, or you don't.

I like to write about the moment of light in the hour of darkness.