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" You know, as fiction writers, if our instincts are off, we can't pay our bills. "

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" I don't sit down to write a funny story. Every single thing I sit down to write is meant to be sad. "

" I'm very interested in what people will do for money. Money: it's timeless. "

" Rather than a teaching tool, I think a novel is more of a witnessing entity. A witnessing entity? What is that? I just want the reader to step in and experience it as a story. "

" It was part of being a girl in the '60s that you were creative. "

" You know, I'm just a very boring, not very funny person in person. I don't feel pressured to be otherwise. "

" Writing has to be an obsession - it's only for those who say, 'I'm not going to do anything else.' "

" Twenty-year-olds have a kind of emotional idealism about relationships and about the world that enables them to say, 'No, you lied to me. Goodbye.' When they see wickedness, they walk away. "

" Humor comes from the surprise release of some buried tension. "

" Nabokov's adventures in language and style and naked braininess are really unparalleled. "

" A story is a kind of biopsy of human life. A story is both local, specific, small, and deep, in a kind of penetrating, layered, and revealing way. "

" I'm surrounded by music; I always was when I was growing up and continue to be. And I love music. And when I imagine a fictional world, I imagine there's music in it for those people, too. "

" I want to create something that doesn't exist exactly in the real world, but exists in a kind of parallel to the real world. "

" If you record the world honestly, there's no way people can stop being funny. A lot of fiction writing doesn't get that idea, as if to acknowledge it would trivialize the story or trivialize human nature, when in fact human nature is reduced and falsified if the comic aspects are not included. "

" If you look at most women's writing, women writers will describe women differently from the way male writers describe women. The details that go into a woman writer's description of a female character are, perhaps, a little more judgmental. They're looking for certain things, because they know what women do to look a certain way. "

" My father was the child of academics and was probably destined to become an academic himself but vetoed that idea. Bailed, dropped out of graduate school and just went to work for an insurance company. But the house was full of books and music and all of that. "

" Some people get their books on the best-seller list and then they count the number of weeks, and I just never want to live that way. "

" I've had nonstop financial problems my whole adult life. It's always been a constant balance, year to year: 'Where's the time? Where's the money?' "

" I grew up with 'Life' magazine on the coffee table, Life cereal on the breakfast table, and the game of Life on the card table. People were just so happy to be alive, I guess. "

" I've never been to a dinner party where everyone at the dinner table didn't say something funny. "

" When I was in graduate school, I had a teacher who said to me, 'Women writers should marry somebody who thinks writing is cute. Because if they really realised what writing was, they would run a mile.' "

" The only really good piece of advice I have for my students is, 'Write something you'd never show your mother or father.' And you know what they say? 'I could never do that!' "

" I always feel that the book I'm working on is my last book. "

" Literature, of course, is not a contest. "

" An author's life is different, complex, and ongoing, while a character's remains frozen in one little story. "

" I'm not sure that niceness is what we should promote in writers. "

" Everything one reads is nourishment of some sort - good food or junk food - and one assumes it all goes in and has its way with your brain cells. "

" To me, writing is much freer than dancing. With writing, you could do it whenever you wanted. You didn't have to do little exercises and stay in shape. You could have great moments of inspiration that advanced the story. In dance, unless you're going to choreograph things yourself, you're at the service of someone else. "

" I've been falsely accused of drawing too much from real life. But I am a petty thief - I take little things. And, I mean, I can hardly write 10 words before I start to make things up. I start to invent, because that's what I want to do. I'm running away to an invented place. "

" I'm a little harsh. When people say, 'I have writers block. What do you suggest?' I say, 'If you can't write, don't write. No one needs your writing. Don't torture yourself.' "

" I usually grow sick of my short-story characters and think, 'I never want to see you again.' "