“Like all fiction, my lies are just my efforts to be truer than the truth.”

“The characters act for reasons that they cant control and, as readers, we have to believe in their motivations, their sense of choice and in the reality of their suffering, even though, deep down, ...”

“An unpublished writer should doubt themselves. They should constantly wonder whether what theyre creating has merit. And then, having doubted, they should take up their pen and see if they cant mak...”

“Publishers are businesses and I dont blame them for that. If they didnt make money by publishing books, there wouldnt be any books.”

“A good book is not the same as a successful one.”

“A novel must be judged on its merits, not on how hard the journey was to write it.”

“if being is many, it must be both like and unlike, and this is impossible, for neither can the like be unlike, nor the unlike like”

“There is certainly no hope left of getting away. And it isn't even terrible; it's possibly funny, if even that. It's embarrassing. That's all. A little embarrassing to realize that I no longer cont...”

“thinking about tracking. . . . Sometime in grade school, already your fate was settled, your socialclass was established for the rest of your life.”

“Im aware of my actions and responsible for them, so I dont owe any explanation to anyone.”

“I think about how language works so I can best explain how language works.”

“He's a tourist. He takes pictures of people's lives, puts them in a scrapbook, and moves on. All he's interested in is stories. Basically Leslie, he's selfish. And you're not. That's why you don't ...”

“There has to be new words to explain new worlds.”

“People struggling with life in a fallen world often want explanations when what they really need is imagination.”

“In ancient times people weren't just male or female, but one of three types: male/male, male/female, or female/female. In other words, each person was made out of the components of two people. Ever...”