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

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.

For me writing is an organic process that starts with engaging the language and then thinking about the structure of the novel as you move along. Especially in revision you start to notice correlations. Things come up, not self-consciously, because you're busy feeling your way through sentences and trying to push the language into new places.

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

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

My teaching exists in a different part of my brain. However, I am lucky enough to teach very smart graduate students.

I have to say that movies have as much impact on me as music. And that I learned as much about narrative from movies as I did from reading novels, how to arrange stories, how to juxtapose things.