I have this theory that the likeability question comes up so much more with female characters created by female authors than it does with male characters and male authors.

I don't really have special rituals, but I don't try to write fiction unless I have a minimum of a few hours. For me, it takes a while to settle into a mode where I'm truly concentrating.

It's never that hard for me to imagine what it must feel like to be someone else, whether it's an American teenage girl or a Japanese octogenarian man.

I have this theory that the likeability question comes up so much more with female characters created by female authors than it does with male characters and male authors.

People who think my books are autobiographical, which they're not, credit me with having a much better memory than I do. I do, however, have a powerful imagination.

Probably I, like a lot of people, became a writer in imitation of or in homage to the books I enjoyed. When you're so captivated by something, you think, could I do that? Hmm, let me try.

High school is very intense for everyone. But at a boarding school, because you're there 24 hours a day, everything gets magnified.

I do think I was trying to entertain the reader more than I was trying to purge myself.

I don't think it's shameful to admit that some days your time can be better spent reading than writing.

I feel like if you read something, and it makes you so curious about a topic that you then go read something else, that's exciting.

I just think that people are complicated, both men and women. It happens that I write more about women.

I just write the books that I think I would want to read.

I think in general, novels by men tend to be taken more seriously than novels by women.

I'm able to separate fiction and reality. I guess it remains to be seen if other people are.

I'm so trying to give up meat.

In some ways I think it would be very dignified if I went away for twenty years and then wrote my fourth book.

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.

Personally, I have never wished I were a male novelist.

The fact is that in this day and age I don't think any novelist can assume that a book will get attention.

There are so many people who are so much better qualified to write about politics than I am.

Well, I think in my first two novels, both the characters are pretty neurotic, which I would say that I am.

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.

When I was writing my first two books I was also freelancing and teaching and doing other odd jobs.

You know, the point of a novel - or to me, the point of a novel, the gift of a novel is to go really deeply inside people's lives and inside their personal experiences.

We all make mistakes dont we But if you cant forgive yourself youll always be an exile in your own life.

There are two sides to every question.

You look at the whole Human Rights questions, I happened to be there at just the right time when the country was awakening - this goes to the first question you asked - the whole country was awakening to a hundred years of injustice that hadn't been resolved yet.

So, for example, a country was into recession right after I was sworn in, a dot-com bust had taken place. Then the attacks of September the 11th, and then of course the great financial meltdown in the -the fundamental question facing any presidency is how do you deal with the hand you're dealt?

If not for music, I would probably be a very frustrated scientist. It's one way to answer the question, 'What is the meaning of life?' I feel music answers it better.

Did you hear that? I didn't hear anything. Put that question another way.

If you do not know how to ask the right question, you discover nothing.

The real question isn't whether you love your kids or not, but how well you are able to demonstrate your love and caring so that your children really feel loved.

There is no question that everybody who works in show business is lucky because of the number of people who wish they where working in show business.

A single question can be more influential than a thousand statements.

He said there is 80 of us, ready to come down and the next thing I knew is that Jo Brown dashed in and said your family has already moved and you have to move, the boat is ready to take you out. I didn't have time to ask, even ask a question.

So begins a question which has of late become more and more urgent: what is the relation of aesthetics to politics?

When artists make art, they shouldn't question whether it is permissible to do one thing or another.

There's another issue here - and I have some limits as to what I can say - but there's some real question as to the viability of the chemical masks, the protective gear used by our soldiers.

This is largely the methodology I've used throughout my career - that is, starting with a question as to what might be the properties of a set of compounds that could be invented which were unusual and unpredictable. Many times I've felt a bit like Columbus setting sail.

In mathematics the art of proposing a question must be held of higher value than solving it.

The question is: Where would it get you if something that's a little bit ambiguous in the movie is made clear? It doesn't get you anywhere.

Well, WorldCom's growth exploded in the Clinton years, there's no question, there's no disputing that.

Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.

People of little understanding are most apt to be angry when their sense is called into question.

By asking a novel question that you don't know the answer to, you discover whether you can formulate a way of finding the answer, and you stretch your own mind, and very often you learn something new.

Slavery is not the only question which comes up in this controversy. There is a far more important one to you, and that is, what shall be done with the free negro?

Will dissent be permitted? The answer to that question will determine whether the society is a free society or a fear society.

Faulkner turned out to be a great teacher. When a student asked a question ineptly, he answered the question with what the student had really wanted to know.

The question was heatedly debated of how much Western culture should be brought into China.