I think when you get to export your creative impulse into something, it kind of lessens that busy energy that can be so confrontational and pissy.

There might be a different model for a literary community that's quicker, more real-time, and involves more spontaneity.

What good the prophet in the wilderness may do is incremental and personal. It's good for us to hear someone speak the irrational truth. It's good for us when, in spite of all of the sober, pragmatic, and even correct arguments that war is sometimes necessary someone says: war is large-scale murder, us at our worst, the stupidest guy doing the cruelest thing to the weakest being.

Even when the faith goes away, there's that space where you crave something bigger than yourself. For me, that's kind of where art came in, after that.

I don't really do much social media. I just don't like it that much. I've trained myself to write very slowly for a lot of money so it really galls me to write quickly for free.

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

It seemed to me, in some way, especially when you're looking back at distant historical events, the "Truth" with a capital "T" is kind of the juxtaposition of all the many, many, many truths that seem true to people at the time.