My novels tend to take a long time to become exactly what they're going to be. They're fluid messes until I've done a ton of editing and refining and rewriting. When I write novels, I always make related scrapbooks to help me organize and test my intentions.

A lot of writers do think of their characters as living beings. I know that's the way people think. That's why I try to make them real in a certain way, because otherwise people won't read them. It's fine if some readers think of them as real. It's just not the way that I think of them.

I think pornography is a very rich medium, and I've studied it closely and learned quite a lot as a writer from it.

I want to love someone so selflessly that he would never even think about going away. I suppose that's what most people want. In fact, that's probably why we don't kill one another all the time. Everyone's just a little too lonely to risk it.

Cult writer. It's a weird term because it's complimentary but condescending at the same time.

Why is it I feel a new nostalgia for the era of the guillotine?

I was thinking a lot about music, about how music is mixed and how everything is happening at the same time; it just amounts to how the sound is lowered or raised. I was trying to get that with writing.