You want to read a book? That requires introspection. It requires time away from people and time away from the constant need to communicate and to connect.
I like moral judgment to emerge from the reader. We are being sold a very simplistic morality by our leaders at a time when nuance and understanding are at a premium.
Every time I went to the doctor when I was in my twenties, he repeated the same thing to me: don't wait too long to have children.
I've been writing for a long time. I sat down to write my first novel in the middle of March of 1982.
What you discover when you look at creativity from the perspective of the brain is that it is universal. We're all creative all of the time, we can't help but be creative.
I read all the time. I was reading a book I admire very much by Alice McDermot called Charming Billy.
Every time I am in danger of believing the glamour of my own press, some incident inevitably brings me back to earth.
Freaky things happen all the time in the world. I suppose everything has to happen for the first time at some point.
It's time for compassionate Americans to send a wake-up call to their members of Congress and demand passage of legislation to end the wholesale slaughter of America's horses once and for all.
Being a mother is quite tiring. There's not much time to do anything. You just rush around and it's hard work.
When you're a kid, your first five or six years, you converge all the time. School is about training that out of you, especially universities.
I haven't always been a writer and I suppose I tiptoed around the idea of writing full time, because it's so isolating.
Generally speaking, by the time a subculture such as steampunk secures the attention of major media, resulting in extensive coverage of the craze, said phenomenon is already on the way out.
I think if you live in a country, basically you share the dominant values of a country although you may disagree on issues all the time.
The last watch I wore felt like a handcuff. When I need to know the time, I check my cell phone.
I'm a fan of meeting readers face to face, at reader events, where we're able to sit down and take some time to talk.
In my mum's day, you needed to be beautiful for a very short time to catch your man. It didn't start at six and go on until you're 75, right?
Personally I estimate about a third of my time is spent on author events, social media and traditional publicity.
Find fault when you must find fault in private, and if possible sometime after the offense, rather than at the time.
Politicians have always been required to be fake, but now the career havoc wrought by a stray, flying sound bite means they have to sustain their fakeness all the time.
The wonderful thing about being a New York Times columnist is that it's like a Supreme Court appointment - they're stuck with you for a long time.
