Literature is always something - it is either story or poetry, ideally both. That is, you always know what it is and even if the interpretation is not available, the experience of language is.

I like the idea of a book being a democratic space which readers enter, carrying their own thoughts, and participate in a conversation, or experience of grace.

It's so internalized, the way your mind works in relation to anything - it's a process, but then it isn't. It's working all the time.

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.

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

I believe people are much more complicated than they can handle.

I cannot live or write without music. It stimulates the normally dormant parts of my brain that come in handy when constructing fiction.