I think each writer has to seek her most energetic prose style. She has to find a way to write so that nobody can deny it.

If I can be more efficient, I'm actually being more respectful to the reader, which then implies a greater intimacy with the reader.

I'm a big fan of the Russians: Isaac Babel is just an exquisite line-to-line stylist.

I was raised Catholic,I took from that was a sense of theater and drama, and also the idea that there were truths that couldn't actually be uttered directly but really had to be reached through ritual. You come out of those Masses so moved, and you're like, "Why did that happen?" And the truth of it is that it happened through an hour of highly enacted ritual.

So here's something I know to be true, although it's a little corny, and I don't quite know what to do with it.

That for me was the big turning point in my artistic life, when my wife and I had our kids. The world got infused with morality again. Every person in the world should theoretically be loved as much as I love my daughters.

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.