“Ernest Hemingway has been the most important influence on me as a writer. But at a certain point as a writer,”

I can’t have composite characters. I can’t attribute dialogue to someone based simply on my memory and not based on notes taken at the time that the words were spoken.

It is hard to write about physically difficult things without causing the reader to disengage.

For me, a lot of the humor comes not from innocence but from characters trying to figure out how to get what they need. I don’t try to be funny, but am relieved when an opportunity comes up for humor.

The babies have old souls and the old souls have to shrink to become little babies.

As a teacher, I can help my students see what is working and not working. I can show them certain solutions.

I tend to think that we are all pretty much alike. We all feel despair. We all have problems with relationships.

For me, a memoir is nonfiction and nonfiction has to be absolutely true.

To me exposition always contains tenderness.

I need to tell the things that are important but which don’t make sense in terms of the narrative, things that would destroy symmetry or narrative pace. This is my personal belief about what it means to write nonfiction.

There are also so many emotional aspects to money – feelings of inadequacy, feelings of security. I am not sure if there needs to be more about money in fiction, but the absence of this aspect can make a story feel somehow frictionless and unreal.

Exposition suggests a great trust in the reader, and this expression of trust makes a book feel tender.

Even within my stories, people hold opposing views.

Certainly the details of our life are unique. Spending time thinking of how I am different from someone else, however, does not tend to be very productive.

The tears loosen their memories so they can slide away. They cry at the life they have lost, and then they cry at everything they’ll forget.

I realized that he was writing about good people doing good things. This did not match my experience of life and so I found my sentences stretching and becoming less plain.

Seven years into writing a novel, I started to lose my mind.

In success there’s a tendency to keep on doing what you were doing.

Our disrespect for thinking: someone sitting in a chair, gazing out of a window blankly, always described as ‘doing nothing’.

I never used to take holidays and it would upset ex-wives and girlfriends, but working has me in a better mood than doing nothing.

I believe in not attacking a country pre-emptively unless you’re sure of what you’re doing and you’re working with allies.

Successful people just don’t let failure define them or keep them from doing what they want to do. For example, I’d have people come up to me after my shows, and they’d say they want to do stand-up but are scared they’re going to fail. I’d tell them,

We’re all fortunate to be able to be doing this for a living, so we’re just grateful to be here and we just do what we do and we let the people decide.

You have to be very careful when doing something like that.

I think I’ve done well in all. It’s important to keep doing something different and reinvent oneself to avoid stagnation from creeping in.