I always think the novelist should go to the culture's dark places and poke around. Pose a lot of hard questions.

A good novel should be deeply unsettling - its satisfactions should come from its authenticity and its formal coherence. We must feel something crucial is at stake.

You are always working towards the moments in which characters experience reckonings or insight or change. I like to track them past those moments.

The writer has to take risks and go somewhere full of mystery and possibility for the novel to deepen over the years it takes to write it.

There's lots of things that can't make it in the world that are worth making. There are lots of great artists who never make it, there are lots of great writers who don't get published - is it still worthwhile? Aren't we glad people are still doing it?

The writer has to be brave, I think.

Your memories from your early childhood seem to have such purchase on your emotions. They are so concrete.