A human being can be good or bad or right or wrong, maybe. But how can you say a person is illegal? You just can't. That's all there is to it.

There is something in us that loves certain disasters and the fever of this moment and surrendering to that.

The moth settled onto the curtain and sat still. It was an astonishing creature, with black and white wings patterned in geometric shapes, scarlet underwings, and a fat white body with black spots running down it like a snowman's coal buttons. No human eye had looked at this moth before; no one would see its friends. So much detail goes unnoticed in the world.

If someone does learn about the world from reading a novel of mine, that makes me very happy. It's probably not what brings me into the novel in the first place - I usually am pulled in by some big question about the world and human nature that I'm not going to resolve in the course of the novel. But I'm very devoted to getting my facts straight.

Why is it that only girls stand on the sides of their feet? As if they're afraid to plant themselves?

Given my own circumstances, I find that anything can turn out to belong nearly anywhere.

Don't wait for the muse. She has a lousy work ethic. Writers just write.