A Heart So White is simply one of the best novels I know. I'm also thrilled by Javier Marías sentences, by how elegant they are while also being so permissive in relation to the niceties of grammar and so open to the prospect of surprise. He's a genius.

I do think that the sense of being opposed to the present moment, that sense of the rub of history, invigorates the writing I find most exciting, and maybe precisely in being equally allegiant to an inward fineness of sensibility and an outward-facing rigor of protest or critique.

I am a gay writer, absolutely. And in no way does that fact limit the reach or importance of what I write.

Woolf is an important writer for me, someone I read often and who forms part of my ideal of what literature can do.

History is never invisible, finally, though some people seem to work very hard to be willfully blind.

I'm not sure I can articulate any principles behind the decisions about what to cut and what to keep.

Being a high school teacher was wonderful, but unsustainable: I needed a way out.