When I was teaching at Harvard in the 1970s, I went to Project Incorporated in Cambridge and took photography classes. I didn't even know how to aim the camera in those days.

You have to figure out who the right person is to tell the story. And often, people who are very self-aware will only sound as if they are pontificating if they tell the story.

Falling in Place was meant to be very much rooted in a place and time, and music was a part of that.

I think that I'm serious, but I don't think that I'm inordinately bleak.

It's often been said that I'm an extremely depressing, cynical writer. I've never known what to make of that.

While I would agree that I write about serious subjects, and that they're not necessarily the most pleasant subjects or even the most pleasant people, as a writer I just think about the humorous aspects of these things - that's what keeps me going when I'm writing a story.

Also minimalism is a term that all of us who share so little in common and who are lumped together as minimalists are not terribly happy with.

I don't even correct people when they mispronounce my name now.

I must say also that it's never worked to my disadvantage that I have long, blond hair.

I think I write about things that are mysterious to me.

I've spent my life supporting myself.

If you could have a book called My Favorite Six Stories, I don't think I'd have trouble doing that.

It's gratifying that it does; I love to give readings.

It's interesting, though, that in daily life, I think of myself as being relatively unobservant.

Nobody can assume that, to a writer, everything is off-limits.

Women are obviously much more discriminated against than men in many ways.

I could name a few songs and say exactly what summer they came out and what boy I thought I was in love with when I was fourteen years old, but I think that music used to be really more a part of the culture when people went out dancing in a different way than they do now.

I don't write about things that I have the answers to or things that are very close to home. It just wouldn't be any adventure. It wouldn't have any vitality.

I feel that these stories are being written to articulate certain confusions and disappointments, and I do mean to shake up the reader, and I do hope they're on target.

I like a lot of Margaret Atwood, I like much of Alice Munro. Again, if you were to ask me about male writers, there's often a novel I admire, but not all of their works.