The way I understood purgatory - and maybe you've got a different version - but in Chicago in the '70s, the idea was it was like detention. You had screwed up and you go over there in purgatory and you sit there until the end of days and then we'll decide. You'd made your mistake, and you were in prison, and it's not terrible and it's not great, and you feel a little crappy because you were not in the presence of God.

I think that tri [to Ram Bahadur Bomjon] was the first time I'd even seen something that made me think, or really feel: "Ah, I don't know what's really going on in the world - I think I do, and it feels like I do, but whatever is really going on is, de facto, beyond the scope of my comprehension - the best we can do is look for hints." I'd known that intellectually before but that was the first time I really believed it viscerally.

Goodbye. I am leaving because I am bored.

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.

Whatever happens, we can deal with it if we admit that it's happening and so on. So to be comfortable with what is - that is a real superpower.

My stories, I can understand them as a little toy that you wind up and you put it on the floor and it just goes under the coach. That I get. Beyond that, I'm a little lost.

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.