It's funny with fiction - once you cut something, it hasn't happened anymore.

I've found that my first drafts are not so special. But the more I work on them, the better they get. They are more unique and defensible.

I sometimes think that I can't do the bigger thing that [Zadie Smith] do so beautifully, as in Swing Time, with so much world in it and so much rapturous paint thrown around. I don't think it would be possible to write a book on that scale with as much OCD as I have.

I've had that situation where I start writing somebody really miserable, and in order to make the story come alive, I have to give them a vote of confidence, make him vulnerable or wounded. But in real life, you often meet people who, in that particular moment, actually shouldn't get a vote of confidence.

Whatever you love, that will be an influence. It just will. So in effect the young writer's job is: go out and find some stuff to love.

I have finally realized that, you know, it's not a given that my lifespan will accommodate my writing aspirations.

Whole idea is really intriguing to me. If you took snapshots of ourselves throughout the day, the way that our mind is twisting and turning, then at the moment of death, the mind would be twisting and turning in the same way. But the Buddhists say it's super-sized because there's no bodily damper on it.