Most human things are full of conflict and ambivalence, not ease and simplicity. The world has grown increasingly fundamentalist, and the parameters of discussion have become narrowed. People, when they're fearful, are vulnerable to certainty in rhetoric.

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

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

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.

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

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

When I write characters, I need to hear their voice. As soon as I get them speaking, and I feel how they use language, I understand who they are and what they want.