That's one of the reasons I take a lot of consolation in fiction. You have years to work on it. I think that allows you to reach for the best part of your reader instead of a lot of the internet stuff, in which you're kind of reaching for the worst or the most shallow part of your reader.

Writing and reading and speaking with specificity and skill has never seen more important to me than it does at this moment. It's what's between us and chaos.

I think something that I can't name about our media has made us move away from that kind of specificity and that kind of curiosity.

I've always wanted to write energetic, atypical sentences, i.e., sentences that were not normal or bland.

I watched a bunch of kids movies on Christmas. I was kind of joking with our family by asking, "Is anyone allowed to die in a kid's movie anymore?"

I'm a big lover of America. I love the people, but also the weird berms, the strange little high schools tucked away in different places, and just the whole geography and the psycho­logical apparatus of Americans.

Every writer knows that when you're imitating somebody - you know, you're sounding like Faulkner - you're doing pretty good, but your life in Hoboken isn't Faulkneresque.