I'm an enormous fan of Thomas Bernhard's books, and I like the relentless feeling in his work - the pursuit of darkness, the negative - and I think in some sense I've internalised that as what one is supposed to do.

In some sense, prose fiction is just a way of unlocking a space. If I can unlock the space, it comes out and it's vivid, I find that I care about it, and it's part of me.

My parents showed me by example that they could balance their work and family lives.

Rain is used as white noise when God is disgusted by too much prayer, when the sky is stuffed to bursting with the noise of what people need.

To refrain from storytelling is perhaps one of the highest forms of respect we can pay. Those people, with no stories to circle them, can die without being misunderstood.

I like big doses of grief when I read: Richard Yates, Flannery O'Connor, Kenzabaro Oe, Thomas Bernhard.

A self needed to spill out sometimes, a body should show evidence of what the hell went on inside it.