[I]t may be that a crowd at a particular moment of history creates the object to justify its gathering.

What he needed was to find fifty more people like him, who had stopped being themselves without realizing it.

When does a fake Mohawk become a real Mohawk? Who decides? How do you know if it's happened?

The answers were maddeningly absent—it was like trying to remember a song that you knew made you feel a certain way, without a title, artist, or even a few bars to bring it back.

I think the one thing that's changed over time is that I've come to realise, as a fiction writer, the fact that I don't think it will work out, doesn't mean that it actually won't.

I write fiction longhand. That's not so much about rejecting technology as being unable to write fiction on a computer for some reason. I don't think I would write it on a typewriter either. I write in a very blind gut instinctive way. It just doesn't feel right. There's a physical connection. And then in nonfiction that's not the case at all. I can't even imagine writing nonfiction by hand.

Kissing Mother Superior, incompetent, hairball, poppy seeds, on the can.