I'm not thinking much about overall themes or preoccupations or anything like that. Instead I'm just trusting that, if I'm working hard, various notions and riffs and motifs and so on are very naturally suffusing the stories and the resulting book.

I love the feeling of being on the hunt - the feeling that the story is refusing to be solved in some lesser way and is insisting that you see it on its highest terms.

The millions or billions of micro decisions that you're going to make, that's what will determine who you are as a writer, not you deciding in advance.

All traditions are also full of meanness for the sake of meanness.

I don't tend to work directly from life, except in trying to mimic or match the outlines of its insanity. In other words, when I live through something, I just try to say to myself, "OK, remember this - life is really this crazy or scary or beautiful or surprising - so try to 'get at' that in your stories.

There comes that phase in life when, tired of losing, you decide to stop losing, then continue losing. Then you decide to really stop losing, and continue losing. The losing goes on and on so long you begin to watch with curiosity, wondering how low you can go.

The great American denial riff is that you can do whatever you like and you always triumph at the end. The world is saying no, you can do what you like, but there are consequences. And maturity is to be able to turn to the consequences and accept them.