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.

Belief and delusion are incestuous siblings.

The way I think of my work is that I have to think up the way to tell a story, starting from scratch. The changes in the industry concern me in a general way because I think civilization is doomed.

I never thought of myself as an outsider. Because outside of what? You would have to give advantage to this space where you're not, to think of it as sovereign because you're not there. I was always in the center of where I needed to be.

Washington D.C.! Congress is full of self-declared outsiders.

There's no connection between consumption of art and moral stamina at all.

Chicago has very few public spaces where people are encouraged to get together. It's partly to prevent riots, and also to segregate a city with a history of racial segregation.