Writing well involves walking the path of most resistance. Sitting still, being patient, allowing the lunatic dream to take shape on the page, then the shaping, the pencil on the page, breathing, slowing down, being willing–no, more than willing, being wide open–to press the bruise until it blossoms.

I could spend two years cross-legged on my floor and feel like I was working.

What's more important that spiritual life? It seems to me it's the bedrock of everything essential about being human.

How do we live the writer's life? There's only one simple answer: 'we write.'

Music inspires me and puts me in the right mood, but to actually listen to it when I write - I find it gets in the way.

Our minds simply don't function in some sort of narrative chronology. I think that one of the great gifts of writing fiction is being able to think about that.

As a fiction writer, that's been a preoccupation of mine: Can you really just close the door and leave the past back there behind you, or is the door going to blow open at some point?