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

We dreamt of light, but hoped for darkness.

To me there's no difference between a book of stories and a novel - they're just slightly different shapes.

A particular piece of music attaches itself to the piece I'm writing, and there is nothing else I can listen to. Every day I return to the same space to write, the music providing both the walls and the pictures on the walls.

I'm bright, but there are lots of bright writers and people everywhere. In no way, at no point do I think I'm better than them.

We, as writers, have to figure out a way to create a consciousness in language. It's crazy even to attempt to do that.

Where can you go from nowhere, except deeper into nowhere?