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" Nobody writes like Nabokov; nobody ever will. What I would give to write one sentence like Vladimir! "

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" I think I have a very American desire and willingness to divulge everything. I would divulge more if I didn't know it wasn't smart. "

" I think a writer is a describer. She describes society and human nature as she sees it. She has to be both typical of that society and alone within it. "

" Several paranoid suspicions occurred to me, the worst of which was that my whole identity was merely a patched-together set of behaviors designed to keep my parents joined to each other - the repertoire of tricks of a small but intelligent dog. "

" I was born on an even keel. Family lore says I never cried, even at birth. I felt at ease on earth, in the right place. And like many children, I took comfort in life's regularity: Every few days it rained, the school bus came and went, and my parents were rooted in their union. "

" For several years before I began 'The Folded World,' I worked at an urban college campus and had a job in a tutoring center, and people would come into the tutoring center, and for some reason, they just kept telling me their life stories. "

" I think marriage and family keeps being written about because that's where we keep our reputations with ourselves - I mean, we can't quite slip the truths we reveal about ourselves at home. "

" I love writing letters. In order to write a novel in first person, I think I needed an addressee. "

" I loved Madeleine L'Engle as a child - 'A Wrinkle in Time.' "

" To me, self-esteem is not self-love. It is self-acknowledgment, as in recognizing and accepting who you are. "

" 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' is, to my mind, a work of perfect genius. "

" I think novels are profoundly autobiographical. If writers deny that, they are lying. Or if it's really true, then I think it's a mistake. "

" Other than a short article I read in 2008 when the real story broke, I have not followed the Clark Rockefeller case, and 'Schroder' is not a novelization of that story. "

" I wanted - and still want - to tell my mother's story. She fled Stalin's army in 1944, leaving Latvia, which was to be occupied by the Soviets for the next 50 years, and arrived to the U.S. when she was 11. "

" In the best writers, the outward-reaching interest in the 'found subject' leads back at a hairpin to some uncomfortable inner recognition that the writer has journeyed very far to see; he comes home half-dead. "

" Reading while I'm writing ideally inspires my competitive side. When I read great writers, I want to be a better writer. "

" I often read poetry to 'warm up' before I write. "

" My personal writing philosophy is to try and write better every day. "

" I certainly want people to like my writing, but I know that if I write with the intention of trying to please people, the writing will not be good because it will not be authentic. So, ironically, I have to be willing to write something strange or unlovable in order to write anything truly good. "

" Oh, I'm a pretty bad poet. This has been corroborated by others. "

" I researched children's rights, divorce law, and parental kidnapping. Millions of children and parents are touched by the inadequacy of the legal system to deal with the human heart. "

" Parenthood is a psychic sweat lodge: enter into it only if you are ready to have your own secreted toxins running into your eyes. Few people are prepared for its power - women or men. "

" Reading 'Blood Will Out,' one begins to understand how so many people were duped by Clark Rockefeller. All the imposter needs is some kind of initial agreement that he is who he says he is; thereafter, consensus builds via a network of human relationships. "

" I do think, in general, children are so perceptive, and they watch and they get so much, and that's wonderful. And it's also difficult for them because they see so much, but they don't understand. "

" Self-esteem comes quietly, like the truth. "