My artistic approach is that you're supposed to be a little baffled.

I read to make myself feel awake.

There are books that I read years ago that enlivened things in me that haven't died yet.

I remember reading The Bluest Eye when I was a young parent, and something opened in me. That's the highest aspiration.

Writing a story I am just trying to find some little interesting thing to start out with: something small, even trivial. Preferably something that doesn't have a lot of thematic or political baggage - a little crumb that is interesting.

I'm a big fan of the Russians: Isaac Babel is just an exquisite line-to-line stylist.

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.