An artist's job is to be interested in things as they are.

My idea about collections is that you write as hard as you can for some period and what you're really doing during that time is hyper-focusing on the individual pieces - trying to make each one sit up and really do some surprising work.

I think if someone could demonstrate to me that fiction did no good, I would still do it, because I think it does good for me.

The bottom line for me is that life is short and art is long.

I'd just say that truth is power and vice versa.

The beginning [of Lincoln in the Bardo] is strange, and I did a lot of work calibrating that so that a reader with a certain level of patience would get through it and in the nick of time start to figure out what was going on. In a short book, you can do that.

So, good news/bad news: good news that I'm progressing; bad news that life is short and art is long.