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

People think about who they are in the stillest hour of the night. I carry this thought, the child's mystery and terror of this thought, I feel this immensity in my soul every second of my life.

Out of some persistent sense of large-scale ruin, we kept inventing hope.

I've always seen myself in sentences. I begin to recognize myself, word by word, as I work through a sentence.

Stories are consoling, fiction is one of the consolation prizes for having lived in the world.

Brilliant people never think of the lives they smash, being brilliant.

It is possible to be homesick for a place even when you are there.