Nobody thinks that there were never mechanical horses in the world. Everybody knows that there aren't really golems.

I was working on the book, but in a very subterranean kind of a fashion. And I think that giving yourself permission to respect that, without being lazy and not doing work when you could be doing work and just don't feel like it - that's a different balance that can be complicated to strike.

As a Jewish thinker, I don't think of myself in relationship to the dominant culture's religion.

I think that we're all always just working on finding how that balance functions for us, given today's circumstances.

Time is finite and the demands of the imagination and also the demands of the world are infinite, so sort of brokering some kind of agreement between those things is a continual, and for me, and ever-changing challenge.

Teaching is enormously satisfying because I'm constantly learning more. Just constantly being exposed to new voices and new life experiences and new worldviews and new structural dilemmas and new characters - it's really exciting for me.

A good book is a good book, and there are a lot of different ways to approach writing or reading one.