“As a novelist, I tend to know significantly more about my characters than I do about my friends.”

“Drinking is a remarkable, automatic release and a way of relaxing.”

“For many years now, my source for salvific chicken soup has been the Sanamluang Cafe on the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Kingsley Drive: crystalline broth, flecks of fried garlic, and a moist, steamed bird nesting on thick rice noodles and bean sprouts has stanched many a misery.”

“I think we all have our demons and our various shortcomings, and it would be nice if people felt more gently about other people, but also about themselves.”

“It isn't as if a writer merely records life as it unfurls. Reality does not automatically transcribe as literature; real people are not shapely, compelling characters to be harvested. Charming facts and sharp observations rarely slide seamlessly into whatever narrative is at hand.”

“My mother, a nonpracticing Jew from Delaware, had married a non-practicing Protestant in California. Sometimes, certainly not always, Jew + Protestant = Unitarian, and that is what we were - 'Jewnitarians,' as I like to say.”

“My mother cooked her last Christmas standing rib roast in 1987 and died a few weeks afterward.”

“The laws of literature, like the laws of gossip, usually demand exaggeration, decontextualization, a heightened or minimalized reality, and a lot more shape and order and impact than everyday life.”

“Writers can take offense when someone asks what's real or autobiographical in our work because, to us, that's not what counts. The bits taken from life are tiny scales on the dragon's tail - what about that whole beautiful writhing, fire-breathing dragon?”