Teaching is all armchair. I learn about writing by writing and thinking about what I've written and throwing it away.

I'm attracted to how fraught the parent-child relationship is, swerving so easily between love and hostility, with almost no plausible way to end, unless someone dies.

In certain strains of Judaism, there's a profound passion for the ineffable. Contemplation of God is meant to be forever elusive, because, you know, our tiny minds can't possibly comprehend Him. If we find ourselves comprehending Him, then we can be sure we're off track.

Among other things, autoimmune disorders are an induction into a world of unstable information and no reliable expertise.

I always, at least back then, struggled with emotion in writing. I felt like I could do odd, unusual things, but there wouldn't be enough feeling in them, and maybe if there's a progression at all to anything that I've done it's that I've always wanted to have a high - an almost overwhelming - degree of feeling in what I write.

Fiction becomes a place where I face certain fears such as losing language or losing my children.

Suspense left my life a long time ago, now it has returned. I do not care for it.