Thomas Jefferson went through the New Testament and removed all the miracles, leaving only the teachings. Take a source, extract what appeals to you, discard the rest. Such an act of editorship is bound to reflect something of the individual doing the editing: a plaster cast of an aesthetic-not the actual thing, but the imprint of it.

Genre is a minimum security prison.

To me, the moment you're talking about nonfiction you're talking about reality.

My medium is prose, not the novel.

I don’t know what’s the matter with me, why I’m so adept at distance, why I feel so remote from things, why life feels like a rumor.

Story seems to say that everything happens for a reason and I want to say, No, it doesn’t.

A book should either allow us to escape existence or teach us how to endure it.