I've always felt that my subject was living in dangerous times.

I don't want to do the type of writing where I recite biography, parentage and education. I want to rise up from the words on the page and do something, hurt someone.

The true life is not reducible to words spoken or written, not by anyone, ever.

Stories have no point if they don't absorb our terror.

I am not comfortable with abstract writing, stories that look like essays: you have to see, I need to see.

When I work I have a sculptor's sense of the shape of the words I'm making. I use a machine with larger than average letters: the bigger the better.

I think fiction comes from everything you've ever done, and said, and dreamed, and imagined. It comes from everything you've read and haven't read... I think my work comes out of the culture of the world around me. I think that's where my language comes from.