I have no real regrets.

I liked the old comic books, especially the funny ones like 'Popeye' and 'Beetle Bailey.'

I keep a big, fat dictionary with me while writing.

I am a compulsive writer.

I am a very personal writer. I write direct to the reader. I don't hold back.

Instead of becoming a great shikari, as my mother and stepfather might have wished, I had become an incurable bookworm and was to remain one for the rest of my life.

I love to sleep.

I've noticed people in India have developed a habit of hugging around people. I don't understand it now. I wanted to be hugged when I was young. Now, if someone wants to hug me, I feel only claustrophobic.

Money is not the motivating force. It's nice to have money, but I don't live high. What I enjoy is running the business.

A writer cannot be judged for his project, only its execution.

I love fiction's ability to allow me to inhabit a wholly different life.

Usually, when you see clothes on a model, by some transitive property, that garment is imbued with her beauty.

I've spent many hours of my life browsing in stores. At 21, I admired clothes I couldn't afford. At 30, I bought them. At 40, I sometimes go simply for the pleasure, of seeing what is new, of learning what counts as beautiful now.

When I look at the list of my favorite works, writers who are women do tend to outnumber writers who are men for whatever reason.

I grew up in the D.C. suburbs, and what I like about that place is that there's not a strong regional affect in the cultural imagination like there is in Dallas or San Francisco or New York City. You have a little more freedom as a novelist this way. The suburbs become a generic idea, and the place doesn't intrude into the narrative.

The person most qualified to tell the tale of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is the man himself, as gifted an intellect as he is an athlete.

I always like it when writers posit writing as an act of empathy. It's such a grand turn of phrase, such a noble ideal; empathy is so worth aiming for in life that the same must hold true in art. But personally, I can't think too deeply about that when I'm working, or I'd never get anything down on the page.

I married the man I love when the state of California said I could. We made a family through adoption, as New York State said we could. From the outside, our family - two dads, two sons via adoption - seems like an experiment, but what family isn't an experiment?

Men's fashion's tendency toward uniformity promises little fun, but at least it offers this: If I wear sweatpants and sneakers, I can pass as the American it's safest to be.

Class is very, very fertile territory for American artists, and it has been for a long time.

I didn't know, at 22, that regret is useless. If I could go back and change something - give myself some big break, pass along some secret information, reassure myself that most things would, in fact, work out - I don't think I would.

Everyone on Twitter - everyone on the Internet - seems so damn certain. Brevity doesn't allow for nuance, and it's a nice complement to confidence.

In a strange way, Louise Erdrich is perhaps our least famous great American writer; she is not reclusive, but she is reticent, and her public appearances give the impression of a carefully controlled performance. But Erdrich has also shared many of her most intimate emotions and experiences, in some form, in her novels.

Lindsay Hatton's novel 'Monterey Bay' so beautifully evokes the landscape of the titular locale, you'll feel transported to Northern California even if you're reading it on the bus on your morning commute.