One of the ideas that runs through this book [Lincoln in the Bardo] is this Buddhist notion that the mind is incredibly powerful; not the brain but the mind.

Whether you're eighteen or sixty, in a certain way, whatever you know is valid.

If I go to the coffee shop and have a nice interaction with the barista, I don't know what that does for world peace, but we have to assume that in the great basket of goodness maybe that's one little micron or one little neutron that you've put in there.

Monologue is the most honest way to represent human beings.

If you haven't read you don't have the voice. The lack of voice eliminates experience.

If you at least try to do the things that excite you, it will make you a more expansive and present person - you’ll feel, at the end of your life, that at least you took the shot.

I think the trick of being a writer is to basically put your cards out there all the time and be willing to be as in the dark about what happens next as your reader would be at that time.