Spelling is a way to make words safe, at least for now, until another technology appears to soften attacks launched from the mouth.

My first book, 'The Age of Wire and String,' came out in 1995, and it was hardly reviewed at all.

I love the way dates in a text make us think that truth will follow.

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.

Family seems so rich and complicated to me. There's meant to be this unfailing biological loyalty and yet at the same time it's this theatre for various kinds of cruelty. I know it doesn't always work out that way, but the worst possible behaviour is sort of allowed for. It looks to me like an endlessly rich container for really terrible drama, but also pretty grand love. It accommodates such a variety of feeling in such a natural way, and it feels so relatable, and yet it's such a funny construct, socially, the family.

The common, the quotidian, is so much more unyielding to me, really stubborn and hard to work with, and I like this because it makes me think and it makes me worry. I can't just plunge my hand into the meat of it. I need new approaches.

It amazes me that parents are allowed to raise kids. There's so much power and often very little accountability.