I don’t know what you’re feeling, I won’t even pretend

I have a lot of novels that I haven't finished. I usually get 150 pages in and I realize it's not going anywhere. I don't publish everything I write. I must have six unfinished novels at least.

When I'm creating a character, it's a little bit like what my theater teachers used to tell me about Stanislavsky, like if you're using sense memory to do a scene - if you have to cry in a scene, you try to remember something in your life that made you cry and you use that in order to get the tears.

The worst thing about religion was religious people.

I think the suicides in my first book came from the idea of growing up in Detroit. If you grow up in a city like that you feel everything is perishing, evanescent and going away very quickly.

What if you had faith and performed good works, what if you died and went to heaven, and what if all the people you met there were people you didn't like?

The trees like lungs filling with air. My sister, the mean one, pulling my hair.