The world is full of abandoned meanings. In the commonplace I find unexpected themes and intensities.

There is a world inside the world.

It's true that some of us become better writers by living long enough. But this is also how we become worse writers. The trick is to die in between.

I think my work is influenced by the fact that we're living in dangerous times. If I could put it in a sentence, in fact, my work is about just that: living in dangerous times.

I watch movies occasionally, and I watch documentaries. Virtually nothing else.

The genius of the primitive mind is that it can render human helplessness in noble and beautiful ways.

To portray America over the past twenty years or so, I would think immediately of football, probably the Super Bowl in its sumptuous suggestion of a national death wish.