One of the reasons that art is important to me is sometimes it actually feels more coherent than life. It orders the chaos.

And in some of the houses, people were getting old and sick and were dying, leaving others to grieve. It was happening all the time, unnoticed, and it was the thing that really mattered. What really mattered in life, what gave it weight, was death.

Biology gives you a brain. Life turns it into a mind.

no reason to mention my peculiarities, my wandering in the maze these many years, shut away from sight. and from love, too.

Their desire was silent yet magnificent, like a thousand daisies attuning their faces toward the path of the sun.

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.

That’s how people live, by telling stories. What’s the first thing a kid says when he learns how to talk? “Tell me a story.” That’s how we understand who we are, where we come from. Stories are everything.