I see music as an aid. It overcomes my internal editor, especially when the music evokes the character or the mood I'm trying to build.

We should feel an urgency about our environment and what's been done to it by human action and inaction. I wouldn't say there's a resurgence - I think it's been with us all along, and especially since the 1960s and 1970s, but it is true that there's almost a subsection of the bookstore devoted to it now. Personally, I've been addressing these issues in my long and short fiction since the late 1980s - basically since the beginning of my career.

I had learned so much about the world that I had decided to withdraw from it.

You can either waste time worrying about a death that might not come or concentrate on what’s left to you.

When we wake, it is because something, some event, some pinprick even, disturbs the edges of what we’ve taken as reality.

Position yourself to succeed by doing the other things in your life that rejuvenate you. You can create little islands of time away from your novel that will help preserve your balance. Exhaustion will affect both your writing’s quality and your productivity.

I do believe very much in the idea of unexpected or "convulsive" beauty - beauty in the service of liberty.