“It takes me a very, very long time to write a story, to write a piece of fiction…” — Deborah Eisenberg

I suppose I'm always looking for a sort of acuity of perception either in my characters or about my characters.

It's a complicated issue, but I define myself as an American, primarily.

I believe that people are what happened to their grandparents.

It's certainly possible to write fiction that isn't trivial and isn't what people would call political, but it is very hard to figure out how, because our ordinary lives have such a strong tincture now of the whole world.