It takes a long time to write a novel when you have to keep interrupting your work to earn money.

I think there's a false division people sometimes make in describing literary novels, where there are people who write systems novels, or novels of ideas, and there are people who write about emotional things in which the movement is character driven. But no good novels are divisible in that way.

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

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.

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 take the outline from a real person as inspiration, but the in-line is totally made up. Which is why I usually invent imaginary names.

I try to write about how we live today, how we use language, technology, our bodies.