Chekhov - shall I be blunt? - is the greatest short story writer who ever lived.

I think in our time, you know, so much of the information we get is pre-polarized. Fiction has a way of reminding us that we actually are very similar in our emotions and our neurology and our desires and our fears, so I think it's a nice way to neutralize that polarization.

It's one thing to be a perfectionist when you're alone, but when you're trying to make it work in an ensemble that's a whole different deal.

I haven't written a novel or something that long, because I really am improvising all along and the story is growing new limbs to do what it needs to do. So there's very little planning. There's a little planning where I say, "Well, it looks like I'm going in this direction, ok, good." But there's very little forethought or intellectual justification: "Oh, look, I'm putting in a theme park because that represents dystopian America!"

I think that feels like it to me. I mean whenever you talk about writing I think you have to remember that it all has a big question mark over it - every word has a big question mark over it.

There might be a different model for a literary community that's quicker, more real-time, and involves more spontaneity.

Certainly we're always rooting for our particular contingent moment to be a great one. Pain-free. But the more expansive vision has to include the idea that, even for us, sometimes our particular contingent moment is going to be horrific.