On one level, I am a total softie, sort of depressed and afraid of losing the people I love or failing them. To disguise that, there's all this harsh, poop-centric, external swagger, full of nastiness. I'm a cloaking device.

I remember reading The Bluest Eye when I was a young parent, and something opened in me. That's the highest aspiration.

On a more technical level, a story takes a lot of words. And to generate words and phrases and images and so on, that will compel the reader to continue reading - that stand a chance of really grabbing a reader - the writer has to work out of a place of, let's say, familiarity and affection. The matrix of the story has to be made out of stuff the writer really knows about and likes. The writer can't be stretching and (purely) inventing all the time. Well, I can't, anyway.

What's really baffling to me is the way that the technology has risen up to help us become more materialistic.

My heartfelt wish for you: as you get older, your self will diminish and you will grow in love.

Realism is to fiction what gravity is to walking: a confinement that allows dancing under the right circumstances.

The generalizing writer is like the passionate drunk, stumbling into your house mumbling: I know I'm not being clear, exactly, but don't you kind of feel what I'm feeling?