Even if we try to see people in our lives accurately, it is distorted by our own wants and prejudices and experiences.

My husband is a musician. He cooks and he's a chef but he also, he makes basement recordings. So many people in my life make basement recordings, so I feel very lucky, I'm surrounded by very creative people.

I like to mix the real and the imaginary. Sometimes it is characters inspired by real people I know or know of. Sometimes it is a named person from the common cultural dreamscape. And it is tricky, because they have a lot of associated ideas that come with them, and a lot of actual facts.

That was one of the reasons I became a writer - I never really had that many friends. I would read a lot, and listen to music. And that was my life.

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.

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

I like the challenge of creating a world with only sentences.