Having reached a point in which I was so bitter and exhausted from being a quote unquote public figure, I wanted to return to a more childlike relationship to writing.

It is so common to write autobiographical fiction in which your own experience is thinly disguised.

The Term Paper Artist' represents two models of writing, one of the little boy bouncing his ball, generating stories for the sheer pleasure of it, and the besieged adult, writing to make a living, having to contend with a very competitive, very unreliable world in which public image counts.

Childhood smells of perfume and brownies.

I think in every lesson there's a blessing, and there's so many blessings from all the lessons I've had to go through in life.

One reason we resist making deliberate choices is that choice equals change and most of us, feeling the world is unpredictable enough, try to minimise the trauma of change in our personal lives.

I had read Harold Bloom's 'Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?' Late in his life, having read everything, Bloom asked which books had given him wisdom. I had just read a bunch of contemporary novels that had no wisdom for me.

I think overdesigning comes from a lack of editing. The strongest, most compelling, and most useful things in life are irreducible - love, truth, faith, honor.