Well, I think that if you sincerely try to imagine what life is like for another person – not in a mocking way, not in a satirical way, but in a sincere, compassionate way – I don’t think that’s exploitive.
I heard Gillian say, with a laugh, At this point, does anyone expect the liberals not to be total hypocrites? She was oblivious to the possibility that perhaps not everyone present shared her views, and I thought, You’re sixteen. How can you already be a Republican?
I’m so trying to give up meat.
I think I would have liked to have been a twin. Sometimes my sisters and I get mistaken for twins, and I always take it as a compliment.
My boarding school experience was the only thing I had strong enough feelings to write about for hundreds and hundreds of pages. I can still smell the formaldehyde of the fetal pigs in biology.
Of course, I didn’t imagine then that I could have had a real relationship with any guy. I thought that by virtue of being me I was disqualified.
At that time in my life, no conclusion was a bad conclusion. Something ended, and you stopped wishing and worrying. You could consider your mistakes, and you might be embarrassed by them, but the box was sealed, the door was shut, you were no longer immersed in the confusing middle.
To remain alone did not seem to me a terrible fate, no worse than being falsely joined to another person.
Foolish names and foolish faces often appear in public places.
And an unstable childhood makes you appreciate calmness and not crave excitement. To spend a Saturday afternoon mopping your kitchen floor while listening to opera on the radio, and to go that night to an Indian restaurant with a friend and be home by nine o’clock – these are enough. They are gifts.
I like it when characters are some combination of appealing and maybe flawed or self-interested. I think in terms of scenes, and what I want a scene to achieve, and I think that the psychological realism arises from that.
It is not a camera, or a reporter that makes something real and genuine; more often a camera or a reporter does the opposite.
I think I write what’s interesting to me, and so if I’m reading I like to have a very thorough idea of a character in a book that’s by someone else.
There are people we treat wrong and later, we’re prepared to treat other people right.
If a man wants to be romantically involved with you, he tries to kiss you. That’s the entire story, and if he doesn’t kiss you, there is never a reason to wait around for him.
I don’t think that I would ever, while writing, think to myself, “I need a little more psychological realism.”
I feel like as I’ve gotten older I’ve unfortunately come to the decision that a lot of people who seem normal and boring maybe are normal and boring.
Anyone who’s really interested in anything spends time alone.
I gave people the benefit of the doubt, thinking, so many people that appear very calm and even boring must have all these wild emotions and crazy ideas.
She was the reason I was a reader, and being a reader was what had made me most myself; it had given me the gifts of curiosity and sympathy, an awareness of the world as an odd and vibrant contradictory place, and it had me unafraid of its oddness and vibrancy and contradictions.