I write and read with the assumption that literature contains knowledge of human experience that is not available otherwise.

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

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.

There are studies that have shown that we make decisions, ethical and otherwise, based on the way we imagine ourselves as characters in the stories of our lives. In other words, if we imagine ourselves brave or crazy or open, we're more likely to make decisions in a given situation based on how we imagine ourselves, whatever the facts may be.

When I was in high school, I was in a special math class. I was infatuated with physics, particularly nuclear physics, Einstein, and the Big Bang. I read a lot about black holes. And partly because I'm so lazy I thought you could do all this just by looking at the sky and thinking up universes. It didn't seem like hard work when I was a kid, so I enrolled in this class.

An unjust world represented as harmonious is a political position.

There's no bad writing; you did something. I was operating inside language, and I did something. I'm not ashamed of it.