You go to the marketplace and there are seventeen consciousnesses moving in and out. Sometimes you want the same shirt that I want, and our thought bubbles collide a bit and that makes plot.

Honestly, the choice is: I can be a cheerful person, more awake to correction, more of a force for good ... when I'm writing. Or I can be the opposite of all those things, when I'm not writing.

I'm always nice when I do drugs. But, you know, I'm nicer on the drug called "writing."

Sometimes I think fiction exists to model the way God might think of us, if God had the time and inclination to do so.

As a fiction writer, one of things you learn is God lives in specificity. You know, human kindness is increased as we pursue specificity.

What's really baffling to me is the way that the technology has risen up to help us become more materialistic.

When something really bad is going on in a culture, the average guy doesn't see it. He can't. He's average and is surrounded by and immersed in the cant and discourse of the status quo.