Reading fiction is important. It is a vital means of imagining a life other than our own, which in turn makes us more empathetic beings.

Happiness compresses time, makes it dense and bright, pocketsized.

If I was a waitress, I was too tired at the end of the day when I came home to try to write.

I was very influenced by The Magic Mountain. It's a book that had a huge impact on me. I loved that as a shape for a novel: put a bunch of people in a beautiful place, give them all tuberculosis, make them all stay in a fur sleeping bag for several years and see what happens.

You can’t control what other people think about your art. Think about the part of yourself that you can control, which is your ability to be kind and loving and creative.

Coming back is the thing that enables you to see how all the dots in your life are connected, how one decision leads you another, how one twist of fate, good or bad, brings you to a door that later takes you to another door, which aided by several detours--long hallways and unforeseen stairwells--eventually puts you in the place you are now.

You can't say, "I'm too busy writing to be political." You are one person.