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

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

The idea that you can live off the grid and just do your own thing is a very American idea - that you should be able to do your own thing, if you want to, if you're willing to pay the price for it. I think the price has gotten higher and higher.

Occupy Wall Street means making Wall Street and the corporate power elite understand that the people affected by the binge of unregulated greed are not going away, and they are not going to give up.

The writer has to be brave, I think.

I like to buy books for the kids in my family. I guess that's why they call me the 'mean' aunt.

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.