As a fiction writer, one of things you learn is God lives in specificity. You know, human kindness is increased as we pursue specificity.

I like [Barak] Obama. I like him. So how far does rationality help to persuade anybody? You know, I'm not so sure.

Don't be afraid to be confused. Try to remain permanently confused. Anything is possible.

One of the principals of composition, I would say, in fiction, is you want to do what you can do a lot of. You want to do what you're enthusiastic about and what rings your bell. In this case, almost every decision I made was on that basis.

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.

I watched a documentary about the immigrant crisis around the world. And it does make me blush at all the times I've stood up on the stage and given your speech about the healing power of fiction.

I have this tendency to take a little bit of questionable knowledge and riff on it.