If you could press a button and your ego investment was less, the toothache would be less. Or less tragic at least.

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.

I still believe that capitalism is too harsh and I believe that, even within that, there is a lot of satisfaction and beauty if you happen to be one of the lucky ones, although that doesn't eradicate the reality of the suffering. It's all true at once, kind of humming and sublime.

When you write an essay, of course you're going to get pushback, but you're going to be allowed to make your case at leisure. You're going to be allowed to take into account possible objections and to fully humanize your reader. That feels to me like a much more sane thing to do.

If you want to explore a political idea in the highest possible way, you embody it in the personal, because that's something that no one can deny.

If you haven't read you don't have the voice. The lack of voice eliminates experience.

If you think of a work of fiction as a kind of scale model of the world, then the positive valences - where things turn out better than you thought they would - ought to be in there somewhere, too.