Marriage is like the romantic ideal, and yet the trappings around it and the culture about it are really the opposite of that.

It's a friendly act to write a lighthearted book.

There has to be space for play in literature. We all need some breathing room.

I like to amuse myself.

As soon as a regular guy like Bill Clinton becomes the president, he wears a mantle of greatness. He's the president.

I don't write the same book twice.

I've always wondered: is there really any access to the White House?

Most of my books have something to do with L.A.

L.A., for me, is a perfect microcosm of America - because it's so profligate, and so glamorous, and so anti-intellectual, finally.

I never seem to leave L.A., though I left L.A.

In 1805, the explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, making their way across the West, were warned by American Indian tribes of grizzly bears' awesome strength.

If you're going to do a thing, do it fully so that no writing you give the world misrepresents you - so that nothing you put out there is like a sad regift you couldn't throw away and had to find a place for.

One man's holy is another woman's sublime.

You're lucky if people like your book, and the more people that like it, the luckier I feel.

I wanted to go into the tropics and save animals - and write, of course.

No one bought my screenplays.

Domestic realism has dominated the American marketplace for decades now. It leeches into literary fiction, and I don't think it's that rich a vein.

I'm for any woman who loves sloths.

I don't tend to picture my characters as actors and actresses.

I think that young readers have very strong stomachs.

The comic novels I did when I was in my 20s had a harder edge - less sympathy for people. Or a sympathy that was harder to detect: Characters' foibles and obsessive bents were unrelenting, like caricatures.

'Dept. of Speculation' contains numerous enviable lines.

If I can't find a way to love it, I let it go. Kind of the opposite of the popular homily.

My motto is, if you love something, don't set it free. No matter how hard it struggles. That would be stupid.