I am a great procrastinator. When the writing is going really well, the laundry piles up.

The writer has to be brave, I think.

I think there's a lot to be learned from pop culture. But at the same time I see the dangers of using it in an exclusive way to construct meaning in your life.

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

You're trying to make the language work, and your subconscious is being allowed to make the deeper, more profound connections. It's much better than going at it all frontally. But you can't conjure it in an intellectual way; it has to come out of another engagement, a more intuitive engagement. Revision is where the intellectual, analytical work happens. At least for me.

I am, it seems, interested in people with multiple identities. I think we all have multiple identities.

The novel is about, for me, sustained and organized looking. I do think that people have a hunger for a sustained engagement, that concentration that the book can offer.