It was that impossible thing: happiness that does not wilt to reveal the thin shoots of some new desire rising from within it.

Just through the process of trying to make the living and the dead feel real, all these little benefits came out. And these benefits turned out to be much more articulate statements of what I really believe. And somehow they were more convincing because they were arrived at at such length.

I'm always aware of writing around things I can't do, and I've come to think that that's actually what 'style' is - an avoidance of your deficiencies.

When I wrote that [Donald] Trump piece, I had this uncomfortable experience of sensing a lot of things that were nascent, that I couldn't quite articulate. And one of them was this move toward anti-intellectualism. An anti-love move, even.

I think the trick of being a writer is to basically put your cards out there all the time and be willing to be as in the dark about what happens next as your reader would be at that time. And then you can really surprise yourself. There's that cliche, "No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader!"

I know what it feels like to be in that middle and lower-middle class, and feel like the culture is passing you by; it translates into a great sense of personal frustration that can then morph into political frustration.

While writing this book [Lincoln in the Bardo], [idea of inclusion] occurred to me, you either believe in the Constitution or you don't. If you do, it's intense in what it wants of us.