When my head is in the typewriter the last thing on my mind is some imaginary reader. I don't have an audience; I have a set of standards.

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

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.

Hardship makes the world obscure.

I think if you maintain a force in the world that comes into people's sleep, you are exercising a meaningful power.

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.

The future belongs to crowds.