What evil does first in the world, maybe, is distract us from our pursuit of goodness.

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.

It's on us to investigate ourselves for any lingering sense that we are 'giving' equality. We are not. It is already given. And not by us.

I've always wanted to write energetic, atypical sentences, i.e., sentences that were not normal or bland.

That seems to be the definition of 'novel' for me: a story that hasn't yet discovered a way to be brief.

If I find myself being too earnest and sentimental and hyperbolic and simplistic, which is definitely a tendency I have, then I bring in this perverse henchman.

Whenever you talk about writing I think you have to remember that it all has a big question mark over it - every word has a big question mark over it.