I'm very perverse. If someone tells me I have to read a book, I'm instantly disinclined to do so.

To me, writing is a very physical process. I lay out the entire book with the two narratives side by side on my bedroom floor, and just get down on my hands and knees and start looking at it in that physical space. "Does this really follow from this? Should this be here or elsewhere?" I will literally cut the paper into paragraphs. I'll cut it into segments and move the segments around from one narrative to the other until I feel that I've found the natural structure.

Beneath the stars the lake lay dark and sombre," Stead wrote, "but on its shores gleamed and glowed in golden radiance the ivory city, beautiful as a poet's dream, silent as a city of the dead.

I must confess a shameful secret: I love Chicago best in the cold.

I like all kinds of music, though I tend to prefer jazz and classics.

. . . why some men choose to fill their brief allotment of time engaging the impossible, others in the manufacture of sorrow.

I thought I'd go to a bookstore and see what moved me.