Gainfully unemployed, very proud of it, too.

In February, the overcast sky isn’t gloomy so much as neutral and vague. It’s a significant factor in the common experience of depression among the locals. The snow crunches under your boots and clings to your trousers, to the cuffs, and once you’re inside, the snow clings to you psyche, and eventually you have to go to the doctor. The past soaks into you in this weather because the present is missing almost entirely.

The truth is that I'm never sure how any of my books will be received, and because I can be thin-skinned, I try not to read too many reviews when a book first comes out.

Say what you want about it, Hell is story-friendly... The mechanisms of hell are nicely attuned to the mechanisms of narrative. Not so the pleasures of Paradise. Paradise is not a story. It's about what happens when the stories are over.

Because it is the Midwest, no one really glitters because no one has to, it's more of a dull shine, like frequently used silverware.

Literature is not an instruction manual.

A novel is not a summary of its plot but a collection of instances, of luminous specific details that take us in the direction of the unsaid and unseen.