A novel determines its own size and shape and I've never tried to stretch an idea beyond the frame and structure it seemed to require.

I see contemporary violence as a kind of sardonic response to the promise of consumer fulfilment in America.

I saw a photograph of a wedding conducted by Reverend Moon of the Unification Church. I wanted to understand this event, and the only way to understand it was to write about it.

It is all falling indelibly into the past.

That's how you write novels actually. You suddenly hit upon something and you realize this is the path you were meant to take. You'd be a fool if you didn't follow it. Perhaps it's like solving a difficult question in pure mathematics. There must be a moment when the solution is so simple and evident that you wonder why you hadn't come upon it before. When you do come upon it, you know it in the deepest part of your being. It carries its own logic.

holes are interesting. there are books about holes.

In my experience, writing a novel tends to create its own structure, its own demands, its own language, its own ending.