If you sort of see yourself writing into a space that you don't always recognize, you sometimes learn things that you knew, but weren't entirely aware of. It's very liberating for a writer to go into a space where she or he has not gone before, because, instead of being a tourist, you're like an explorer now, and you're sort of lost in this new idea.

Part of the beauty of fiction is that we come alive in a body that we don't own.

Ultimately, you can only ever write what you know. It's logically and philosophically impossible to write what you don't know.

Novels are more difficult simply because they are longer and require more juggling, but short stories are closer to perfection, if you can get the language right.

The point of flight. To get rid of oneself. That was reason enough to fly.

He told me once that there was no better faith than a wounded faith and sometimes I wonder if that is what he was doing all along --trying to wound his faith in order to test it--and I was just another stone in the way of his God.

A book is completed only when it is finished by a reader.