Literature is about getting in touch. It sounds so hippie, but it really is about sharing stuff. We are a community that doesn't seem to be important for the rest of society, but we are people who want to get in touch - really in touch. We want to be thinking together.

If you write, and you are really alone (writing is a lonely thing), you learn to be alone without suffering. When you read, you also learn to do this. When you write, you deal with things.

The stories on standardized tests don't have one author, therefore they can never authentically be in the first person. Imagine that! Everywhere, there are these tests that have been written by multiple people.

I am still trying to find out things. And I inevitably tell myself the story in different ways every time I think about it.

You are told that you have to eliminate un-useful sentences, but as a writer you know how important details are.

We rely too much on the people we share our lives with. We hold them responsible for things they are not even aware of. We start blaming them.

You can say that literature is about topics like love, death, and all that, but I think there is only one topic that applies to all literature and that is belonging.