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 and writing, really, they support and nourish each other, and they foster good thinking. Because when you show up in the classroom, you may have on the mantle of authority, but in fact, you're just a writer helping other writers think through their problems. Your experience with the problems you've tried to solve comes into play in how you try to teach them to solve their problems.

The development of the plot of the novel leads to a single point, and it's my opinion that the ending that the novel has, which is a somewhat ambiguous ending, is the only logical ending given the structure of the book as a whole.

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.

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

I feel that there is an alternate ending that leaps off too far into fantasy and there is an alternate ending that leaps off too far into pessimism, but that, in fact, the novel as it has developed should, if it's functioning correctly, have equipped you as the reader to make your own decision about where you want to go with that, about where you're going to fall on that continuum. So, the novel is taking you directly up to the point that you have to choose, and it's letting you do that.

I'm not for it [Brookland and The Testament of Yves Gundron ], I'm not against it, I'm just interested in it and how it functions, but I think that, in some senses, in those two novels, that was difficult for people to see.