I have a hard time imagining a country or a government where I would say, "Oh, this is good," where I could live under a government that I respect for a day or a week, even to see what it feels like.

Outsider means "I will accept the possibility that I don't have responsibility for what is happening inside my domain."

You devise ways to tell a story that complies with your sensibility. Style and method are really extensions of your present sensibility.

I'll take any life in which I can make choices and have agency, and America is not a bad place for all that.

I hate traveling and being away from my family. But I like meeting my readers, as what I write is actualized in them. Those encounters are exhilarating to me.

I suppose I'm interested in sorrow, which is very different from depression or despair. Sorrow is continuous with the world; it allows for creativity.

Language is so inherent to humanity, so necessary for even basic thinking, that stories and poetry are available to anyone who can process language.