I don't think much new ever happens. Most of us spend our days the same way people spent their days in the year 1000: walking around smiling, trying to earn enough to eat, while neurotically doing these little self-proofs in our head about how much better we are than these other slobs, while simultaneously, in another part of our brain, secretly feeling woefully inadequate to these smarter, more beautiful people.

What evil does first in the world, maybe, is distract us from our pursuit of goodness.

As a fiction writer, one of things you learn is God lives in specificity. You know, human kindness is increased as we pursue specificity.

I do find the values in A Christmas Carol significant. It is important not to be mean and stingy and not to give up love for money.

I don't know how you feel, but I feel like writing, clarity of thought, and truth have been validated because we see what happens when we get lax in those areas. I'm excited by the idea that writers like us can actually reach out and try to understand and prod and agitate the people who are in support of Trump because we have the tools to do it. We're language people and we're idea people.

The idea is that what an artist lives through should broaden his notion of what it is possible for a human being to live through, and that new understanding should then get into and expand the work.

It is technically very hard to show positive manifestations. But I can look back at the way I thought and felt even as a little kid and there was a lot of wonder there, and openness to the many sides of life.