Reading is a form of prayer, a guided meditation that briefly makes us believe we're someone else, disrupting the delusion that we're permanent and at the center of the universe. Suddenly (we're saved!) other people are real again, and we're fond of them.

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

According to me, your life is going to be a gradual process of becoming kinder and more loving. Hurry up. Speed it along. Start right now.

With nonfiction, I go in trying to be really honest about what my preconceptions are.

My mind has an obsessive, neurotic quality, but I also have a very hard work ethic. I know that a lot of people think, oh, you have a wild imagination. I don't, really. If ten people are sitting around and someone says, "Hey complete this sentence in a funny way," I'm never ahead of the pack.

The book says [Lincoln in the Bardo],"I really need this sci-fi device of a ghost inhabiting another person." You say okay kind of begrudgingly. So the structure seemed informed by need and efficiency.

I don't mind being criticized intelligently; although I don't love it.