I know a lot of people don't listen to music when they're writing because it distracts them, but for me it's almost a way to get into the self-hypnotic state that I need to be in to write.

There's a lot of effort expended once you begin to completely trash your life. Sometimes, writing feels like this to me.

For me, the process of writing a novel happens mostly in your head before you actually start writing.

Our sense of self is a kind of construct. It is in some ways like a novel, and it's like a fabric of fictions that we patch together from memory.

I've been reading Peter Straub since I was a teenager, and his work is hardwired into my brain. A Dark Matter contains echoes of all that has been great about Straub's previous work and builds upon it. This Rashomon-like tale is as spooky and frightening as anything he has written, but it's also an intense and moving celebration of love. Out of the darkness comes, ultimately, a surprising and haunting sense of joy.

Maybe love, like suffering, is relative.

My main reader was my wife Sheila, and I haven't written a lot since she died.