The only durable sense of success is if you've followed your calling.

New Yorkers are mostly interested in New York - in case you haven't noticed.

I don't feel tentative when I start to write. I've usually thought about a novel or novella for several years and created a lot of juice and density and energy by that time so by the time I get ready to go, I just let 'er fling, you know.

The idea is to eat well and not die from it - for the simple reason that that would be the end of your eating.

What moves me most is style: the quality of the writing rather than the story being told.

I wasn't taking myself seriously as a novelist, and then it became my day job.

Poetry, at its best, is the language your soul would speak if you could teach your soul to speak.

You have to temporarily be the character in order to understand him. It's sort of what they used to call 'shape-shifting.'

We are all naturally xenophobic.

I'm outdoors a lot, so I get dark. Guess who gets stopped? I've been pulled over, and they ask, 'Where are you from?' I say, 'Montana.' They say, 'Are you sure? And I say, 'I'm reasonably sure I'm from Montana, but you know, this is a dream life.' You start on this shtick with them and it's fun.

Fiction writers tend to err either making people more than they are or less than they are. I'd rather err on the side of the former.

I've never felt influenced by Ernest Hemingway though I suppose there is something inevitable there.

How is it macho that I like to hunt and fish? I've been doing it since I was four.

Nothing in the world causes more problems than concepts of ethnic virtue. It's irrelevant.

I'm afraid that eating in restaurants reflects one's experiences with movies, art galleries, novels, music - that is, characterized by mild amusement but with an overall feeling of stupidity and shame. Better to cook for yourself.

I can't stand the short story form, which, after all, is a magazine form.

I don't know what psychotherapy does. I have been seeing the same person for 26 years now.

The old fun thing is when somebody typed up the first chapter of War and Peace. And then made a precis of the rest of it and sent it out and only one publisher recognized it.

Because most writers have totally unrealistic concepts of how publishing works.

Yeah, but now suddenly - you know, universities are notoriously market oriented, too.

I used to get criticized for putting food in novels.

I see more genuine sociability between the races in Mississippi than I see in Michigan. No question.

Your kids inevitably want to move where they had their vacations when they were younger.

I can write anywhere.

Short things are short all over and long things are long all over.

I thought, frankly, that it would be more pleasant to write a memoir than it was.

I write novellas because I don't like loose sprawling prose.

I enjoy about 1 out of 100 movies, it's about the same proportion to books published that I care to read.

Writing as a woman presents enormous problems but I have attempted it several times and haven't had many complaints.

I got $30 from Nation magazine for a poem and $500 for my first book of poems.

I couldn't run a tight schedule, and if you're any good at teaching, you get sucked dry because you like your students and you're trying to help them, but you don't have any time left to write yourself.

Sometimes literary critics review the book they wanted you to write, not the book you wrote, and that's very irksome.

If all I did was answer the correspondence I get, that would be my job.

Unlike a lot of writers, I don't have any craving to be understood.

Other than fishing and a little bird-hunting, all I do is write.

I've never been a true fan of the short story and have only published a single example of my own.

Whatever I learned reading 'Scientific American,' nothing can finally compete with your own observations.

We are supposed to write poetry to keep the gods alive.

I had a concussion I didn't get over for three years. I think that's why I'm goofy.

I don't trust anybody that doesn't do good work. I don't give them any credibility. If they can't write, why should I believe anything they have to say?

I couldn't read a screenplay without puking.

I've always been very much attracted to a character that's actually free.

The reviews are getting better, but they always do, in time, if you're still alive.

The person that was closest to me growing up was my sister, who died at 19. She was an incredibly powerful girl, deeply committed to art and literature.

I grew up in an agricultural family, and I never distanced myself from where the food comes from. I think it's quite natural.

Age focuses you. You are much better concentrated. There's more time when you travel less, don't do book tours, avoid interviews or public appearances. You walk the dogs, fish, hunt, cook and write.

I've always been intemperate in my affection for food.

Between the two dream coasts, we're just called flyover country... If you aren't known as an amorphous Eastern Seaboard writer, you're dismissed as a regional author.

I don't want to go around like some kind of bleeding giant or whatever, or thinking I'm a big deal, because it doesn't help you do your work. I think people like Hemingway got into an awful lot of trouble that way.

Riesling? It smells like an intensive care ward.