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.

I heard Zen teacher one time talking about abortion, and he was saying the way that abortion makes bad karma is any time the person involved pretends that there's not a cost to the choice, one way or the other; whether you get it or don't get it, there's a cost. That's just basic responsibility, to admit that there's a cost. And the bad karma is when you pretend that the thing is free.

You can see a whole book as a series of creating an expectation and then delivering a skew on that expectation so it's not totally satisfied.

I'm not thinking in any big thematic or conceptual terms - especially in this book [Lincoln in the Bardo] when I was trying to make the voices more active, more energetic.

I've noticed that nowadays I'm doing a lot of stuff on the phone and on the computer, which I usually wouldn't do earlier. And I can feel my brain being rewired: I'm getting anxious, I'm getting more manic. Now, I'm an extreme case because I'm old and I'm overdoing it. But still, it's really interesting that I can actually feel a change in my neurochemistry from this interaction with the technology.

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

It really was something, to see Ram Bahadur Bomjon, apparently living without food or water. Before I went on that trip I'd asked advice on it from a very wise person who I love and revere - basically trying to see if I was somehow disrespecting Buddhism by trying to write about it, and also looking for some grounding on what stance to take ... and my friend said, "Well, why don't you just go and see?" And I hear that in my head all the time now: "Why don't you go and see?"