Writing is nearly always a matter of finding whatever your brain needs to trick it into being creative, and in my case, a tiny little bit of fact just seems to work.

...sentences swallowed and sung back and swallowed all over again. She was made entirely out of words.

When people write to me with stories, they are never ones that work for me. There's something mysterious about which ones catch you.

The world is always changing brightness and hotness and soundness, I never know how it's going to be the next minute.

My mother was wonderfully out about her dementia. She would sort of - she would say to me, I came out to the window cleaner about having dementia. You know, I love the way that verb for coming out of the closet has now become so socially useful for all sorts of situations, like when you need to explain to the window cleaner that you don't know if you paid him or not.

I wrote the novel [Room], and then I thought, "This could work on film, and I want to be the one to do it." So I went ahead and drafted it.

You cannot predict literary success; the only way you can possibly aim for it is to do your thing and do it well.