Darin Strauss

Maybe the 'Million Little Pieces' of the world are so popular because no one ever writes memoirs about PTA chairwomen; what memoirists do, and often get in trouble for, is bring interesting lives to light. ”

The novelist has permission to do whatever she chooses to supercharge whatever's interesting in her story. This is also known as freedom. ”

I suppose that, for most of us, the fascination of conjoined twins is that such people can serve as symbols. ”

I consider myself a Jewish writer - even if my characters frequently are not Jewish - in the same way, I guess, that I consider myself a Jewish man, even though I don't often attend shul. ”

All writers have their own pet commandments. ”

I'm really wary of self-help books. ”

If you're guilty of something, you can focus on that, but if something terrible happens, and you can't imagine how you could have changed it, that's very difficult for the mind. In some ways, it's more difficult not to be at fault because it's a subtler thing. ”

My knowledge of trains - and love before first sight, love at negative-one sight - comes from Alfred Hitchcock. ”

After a life deprived of everything from romantic love to the choice of when to wake up in the morning, after 29 years without the ability to have a career or even to be alone at toilet, the Bijani sisters are not symbols but women who have had to live a shared life of constant, quotidian sacrifice. ”

A good writer knows that if her style and perceptions are really cooking, she can bring anything off. It's okay, of course, for novelists to depict bland, average families living bland, average lives in bland, average towns. But it isn't okay when those novelists don't outshine their bland, average subjects. ”