There's an imperative to make sure you distinguish fiction from the fact, because if the fact is doing the work, why did you do fiction? And once you raise the question of why - why do fiction? - then you have to answer it in your text as a kind of enactment of the answer.

To close the empathetic gap, you really want to get the person emotionally identifying [with your subject and characters], and then when you do that, then you want sneak in a lesson about history and about politics and whatever else you might think about.

People seem very comfortable having a kind of Cheesecake Factory-type of life.

With kids, they force you to get out of bed. They force you to smile. They remind you of spontaneity.

I think poetry can lead to policy, and I can hear the laughter when I say that.

I'm interested in someone who's mired in grief: how do you get back to that thing that makes them warm? Because you know that's in there.

I can't stay engaged for years with a book unless it has feelings. It can't be an idea for me - it has to be a felt thing.