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

I think that's one of the maybe under-discussed aspects of process - the difference between a good writing day and a bad one is the quality of the split-second decisions you made.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that whatever weirdness was going to be in there, I felt, had to be earned. And it had to be required by the emotional needs of the book.

So much of what I am doing in my fiction is just trying to get into interesting places in terms of language or form, places that don't bore me. And this happens via hundreds of quick micro-decisions that are done "to taste," so to speak. So the experience is one of groping toward that interesting place - trying to leap away from anything that seems boring, or about which I don't have strong opinions. Essentially trying to avoid that moment where, devoid of any strong feeling, I start conceptualizing.

In the absolute sense - kind of from the God's-eye view - God might feel like, "I made this thing that has all of that in it, all the horror and all the beauty."

If you have a friend, what's the best way you can experience her beauty? It's to really accept her. She's weird in this way, I accept it. She's hard to talk to, I accept it. Then that person eventually will come all the way out into the sun. I think it's the same way with our talent. We say, "Look, I'm not going to judge you. I'm going to try to use you in the very best way."

It's a big world, and I really like it.