“Whether art is defined as a representation of or response to reality, ...” — Joanna Scott Quote

Whether art is defined as a representation of or response to reality, it demands an intense engagement with things we haven't managed to understand fully.

The best liars lie with their eyes rather than with their words. This might put writers at a disadvantage.

There's a point I set for myself, and it's an arbitrary point, when I think no matter happens, I'm going to finish that book. And that's when I get to page 100. I have to see it out.

In the early 1980s, I spent a year working as an assistant at the Elaine Markson Literary Agency.

Telling ourselves that fiction is in a sense true and at the same time not true is essential to the art of fiction. It's been at the heart of fiction from the start. Fiction offers both truth, and we know it's a flat-out lie. Sometimes it drives a novelist mad. Sometimes it energizes us.

Masculinity is what you believe it to be. I think masculinity and femininity is something that's very old-fashioned. There's a whole new generation of people who aren't defined by their sex or race or who they like to sleep with.

Defined in psychological terms, a fanatic is a man who consciously over-compensates a secret doubt.

What I have done in 'Company' can't be defined.

You don't want to be defined by one thing. But at the same point... When you are the first in something, that's gonna kinda be the title that sticks. And after Sochi, I was, like, the dog guy. Now I'm the gay guy, and it's fine by me.