In real life, when you have an emotional experience, it's never just because of the thing that's been said. There's the backstory. It's like [Ernest] Hemingway's iceberg theory - the current emotional moment is the tip of the iceberg and all of the past is the seven-eighths of the iceberg that's underwater.

The switch that I'd like to throw on is the one that says, "Look, you're a human being whose mind is every bit as active as anybody else's. Your experiences are just as real." For that matter, even if they're even if they're crazy, they're valid. They occurred in this world so they're valid topics for literature.

And I have finally realized that, you know, it's not a given that my lifespan will accommodate my writing aspirations. It could be that it would take me 12 more books at six years each to get it - which means I would have to live to be 126. Which I fully intend to do, of course.

[Lincoln in the Bardo] is not a long book. And that meant I could obsess over it and live in it both backwards and forwards and hyper-control everything.

So many people mentioned this at these rallies. You go to these things and it's kind of like an oldies concert. I mean, it's not hostile.

He was a father. That's what a father does.Eases the burdens of those he loves. Saves the ones he loves from painful last images that might endure for a lifetime.

The internet kind of feels like happiness sometimes, however. It feels like stimulation.