For many people it's Facebook, or sports on TV, whatever it is. I have my own demons that I battle. But whatever they are, you wish you could not do them. For most of us it's "I cannot get off Facebook." But imagine that your demon has you living on the street. I don't think those compulsions and obsessions are that different.

It's once I discover the people inside that the story really gets going, and then the formal invention becomes less important. It's just the way in; it's the door; and then what's behind it is always some kind of people, which I think probably makes me more in the tradition of realistic fiction because that's usually what I'm interested in, the people.

If a police officer arrests a mime, does he need to tell him he has the right to remain silent.

The form is so malleable and can do so many things.

Life, he thought, is a blatant act of imagination.

You take something from your past that you're somewhat ashamed about and you write about it from another character's point of view.

This is what happens when you live in dreams, he thought: you dream this and you dream that and you sleep right through your life.