I think of discipline as the continual everyday process of helping a child learn self-discipline.
Writers never feel comfortable having labels attached to them, however accurate they are.
But at the same time, I have trouble keeping things out of books, which is why I don't write short stories because they turn into novels.
But I have always - ever since The Accidental Woman - written novels about individuals attempting to make choices in the context of situations over which they have no control.
Contemporary Britain seems an endlessly fascinating place to me - but if I knew a little bit more about other places, and other times, maybe it wouldn't.
I was mainly in a state of nervousness while I wrote it - nervousness that it was far bigger and more complicated than anything Id attempted before, and that maybe my talent just wasnt up to it and the book would have to be abandoned, or would turn out not to work at all when it was finished.
I like the idea of a big caesura between the narratives, a space which readers can fill in with their own speculative history.
I think the United States is sick. It suffers from the sickness, the disease of being the victor and it needs to cure itself from this disease.
Human beings want to know too much abut each other, and that's why there are so many lies.
Women had enormous weight in America. And they still have. Because they are truly the padrone [owners, masters] of America.
You've got to be pretty confident that you're good. If I do a show and for whatever reason no one laughs, I'll be like, 'Wow, those people are weird'.