Many of the left thinkers that really matter to me - that formed a big part of my thinking about politics and art - emphasize how capitalism is a totality, how there's no escape from it, no outside.

I have no interest in artists who are purely affirmative, who've made a commercialized fetish of the culture's stupidity.

I didn't want to write another book about fraudulence.

Just in case God isn't dead, our astronauts carry sidearms.

I came to realize that far more important to me than any plot or conventional sense was the sheer directionality I felt while reading prose, the texture of time as it passed, life's white machine.

The scare quotes burn off like fog.

Maybe that's the way I'm private - I respect the privacy of "my" characters? Anyway, we're getting close to the whole "relatability" and "likability" thing.