I am always trying to do something new and different. The first step is curiosity, questions. You pay attention to what fascinates you. If you can't shake it, there is something there.

There are lots of authentic, moving characters in so-called systems novels, just as there are certainly deep structural ideas in some character-driven novels.

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 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.

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.

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.