I want what I write to be deeply engaging and strange and true.

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.

Getting an audience requires luck as well as talent. Some artists are private and shy. It costs them too much.

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

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

Tell me it's forbidden, unthinkable, and that's where I want to go. Because the chances are it's complicated, and the complications are meaningful.

In order to be a living, breathing thing, a novel has to be failed in some kind of way. Or at least that's how I keep writing them.