Detroit's a great music town. If your interaction with it was mainly musical, I'm sure you have a good opinion of the place.

I approach writing female characters the same why I approach writing male characters. I never think I'm writing about women, I think I'm writing about one woman, one person. And I try to imagine what she is like, and endow her with a lot of my own thoughts and history.

When you stood between somebody you loved and death, it was hard to be awake and it was hard to sleep.

It was morning by the clock but deepest nighttime in his body.

We realized that the version of the world they rendered for us was not the version of the world they really believed in.

There have been hermaphrodites around forever, Cal. Forever. Plato said that the original human being was a hermaphrodite. Did you know that? The original person was two halves, one male, one female. Then these got separated. That's why everybody's always searching for their other half. Except for us. We've got both halves already.

Novelists are always resisting autobiographical readings of their work, because they know how false those can be.