The writer, in order to proceed, is theoretically trying to predict where his complex skein of language and image has left his reader, who he has likely never met and who is actually thousands of readers.

So many people mentioned this at these rallies. You go to these things and it's kind of like an oldies concert. I mean, it's not hostile.

If you bring forth what is within you, it will save you. If you do not bring it forth, it will destroy you.

[Reading Swing Time] made me a feel a little bit like when I used to read David [Foster] Wallace. Like, "I can't play that game. I wish I could, but I can't do it."

Being in church so often, spending those hours sitting in front of a highly symbolic array of objects, hearing those beautiful texts - it teaches a kid that there are important truths beyond the literal ones, and that we have ways to access those truths that are, let's say, super-rational.

I read to make myself feel awake.

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.