It turns out that our intuition is a greater genius than we are.

I very much like people. I don't much like writers who don't.

I'll find something in what I read that snags my imagination in emotional terms; it resonates with me for reasons more complicated than just that it seems like it would make a good story.

I think fiction is all about the exercise of the empathetic imagination. Part of what I do is let the stuff I read about meld with what I have experienced.

The longer you go by yourself the weirder you get, and the weirder you get the longer you go by yourself.

I feel like one of the things I'm trying most to do is stretch my empathetic reach, as far as it will go. I got as far as Gilles de Rais' assistant, for example, and not really as far as de Rais himself.

I'm tempted to do everything. And sometimes I think, "Oh, come on. You can stick that detail somewhere."