It's not that I don't enjoy other people, but what I find with writers is this back and forth. And also, there's no need to talk about work.

Before I had published anything, I still hung out with people who liked to write. None of us had published, so there was no talk about the business, and there was probably a lot more angsty talk back then. But these days maybe there are some more laments about the culture, but I would say no.

For no matter the shadows of an age, the picture of a young couple in love, we are told, speaks most luminously of the future, as the span of that passion makes us believe we can overleap any walls, obliterate whatever obstacles.

Some writers are writing one great, big book and just taking all these different avenues towards it. They might seem on the outside to be different, but they're really not. And that's a different kind of mindset. I don't know why it is, but I just feel like I really want to escape myself as much as I can - myself as the artist, or as the writer, or as the thinker - with each new project, because one, it's just boredom, but also, I guess I just feel most comfortable starting a new book if I just feel a little in the dark about it.

I think that's great - I just try not to be one of those people. I find the more I think about it, the less free I feel when I write and when I work.

What if loving something means you should mostly feel frustrated and thwarted? And then a little ruined, too, by the pursuit? But you keep coming back for more?

When I'm describing wartime activities or violence I don't want to be too ornate, to prettify the picture. Once we trace them to the present, the prose becomes denser.