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I have read on a Kindle. But the Kindle we had only worked for about eight months then it stopped working. You don't have to get books repaired.

A lot of widows feel that they have betrayed their spouse by continuing to live. It's deranged thinking. I know that, but that doesn't stop you feeling it.

No, the thing is, we all love storytelling, and as a writer you get to tell stories all the time.

The books I read I do enjoy, very much; otherwise I wouldn't read them. Most of them are for review, for the New York Review of Books, and substantial.

Probably nothing serious or worthwhile can be accomplished without one's willingness to be alone for sustained periods of time, which is not to say that one must live alone, obsessively.

After my parents passed away - in 2000 and 2003 - I felt I could take the time to think about the past and imagine what it would have been like to be my grandmother.

As a child. I grew up on a small farm, so I did a lot of drawings of animals, chickens and people. At the bottom of every page, I'd put a strange scribble. I was emulating adult handwriting, though I didn't actually know how to write.

As a teacher at Princeton, I'm surrounded by people who work hard so I just make good use of my time. And I don't really think of it as work - writing a novel, in one sense, is a problem-solving exercise.

I probably spend 90% of my time revising what I've written.

A good, sympathetic review is always a wonderful surprise.

It seems disingenuous to ask a writer why she, or he, is writing about a violent subject when the world and history are filled with violence.

A writer can't subtract or excise any of his/her past because doing so would erase the work produced during that time.

Love is an indescribable sensation - perhaps a conviction, a sense of certitude.

I was brought up to be sympathetic toward others.

If my favorite, most comfortable place is by our fireplace in cold weather, expedient places are on an airplane, in a waiting room or even waiting in line; frequently these days, while on the phone having been 'put on hold.'

Yes, I've listened to just a few audiobooks - but hope to listen to more. I've wanted to investigate how my own books sound in this format and find the experience of listening, and not reading, quite fascinating.

A typical biography relying upon individuals' notorious memories and the anecdotes they've invented contains a high degree of fiction, yet is considered 'nonfiction.'

If a book I've committed myself to review turns out to be 'disappointing' I make an effort to present it objectively to the reader, including a good number of excerpts from the text, so that the reader might form his or her own opinion independent of my own.

If I'm writing, I'll say something metaphorical or approximate, whereas scientists are very precise.

Boxing has become America's tragic theater.

Night comes to the desert all at once, as if someone turned off the light.

Love commingled with hate is more powerful than love. Or hate.

If food is poetry, is not poetry also food?

To be knocked out doesn't mean what it seems. A boxer does not have to get up.

Boxing is a celebration of the lost religion of masculinity all the more trenchant for its being lost.

The third man in the ring makes boxing possible.

If you are a writer you locate yourself behind a wall of silence and no matter what you are doing, driving a car or walking or doing housework you can still be writing, because you have that space.

The great menace to the life of an industry is industrial self-complacency.

We are linked by blood, and blood is memory without language.

In love there are two things - bodies and words.

The worst cynicism: a belief in luck.

It is not her body that he wants but it is only through her body that he can take possession of another human being, so he must labor upon her body, he must enter her body, to make his claim.

Nothing is accidental in the universe - this is one of my Laws of Physics - except the entire universe itself, which is Pure Accident, pure divinity.

When people say there is too much violence in my books, what they are saying is there is too much reality in life.

Our enemy is by tradition our savior, in preventing us from superficiality.

Where we come from in America no longer signifies. It's where we go, and what we do when we get there, that tells us who we are.

Our house is made of glass... and our lives are made of glass; and there is nothing we can do to protect ourselves.

Life and people are complex. A writer as an artist doesn't have the personality of a politician. We don't see the world that simply.

Homo sapiens is the species that invents symbols in which to invest passion and authority, then forgets that symbols are inventions.

Boxing is about being hit rather more than it is about hitting, just as it is about feeling pain, if not devastating psychological paralysis, more than it is about winning.

Productivity is a relative matter. And it's really insignificant: What is ultimately important is a writer's strongest books.

Sometimes I read reviews, and without exception I will read critical essays that are sent to me. The critical essays are interesting on their own terms.

When I complete a novel I set it aside, and begin work on short stories, and eventually another long work. When I complete that novel I return to the earlier novel and rewrite much of it. In the meantime the second novel lies in a desk drawer.

Anyone who teaches knows that you don't really experience a text until you've taught it, in loving detail, with an intelligent and responsive class.

I consider tragedy the highest form of art.

I could never take the idea of religion very seriously.

The cleaning is something I use as a reward if I get some work done. I go into a very happy state of mind when I'm vacuuming.

I was writing novels in high school and apprenticed myself in a way both to Faulkner and to Hemingway.

I think all art comes out of conflict. When I write I am always looking for the dramatic kernel of an event, the junctures of people's lives when they go in one direction, not another.

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