Class is the most taboo subject in America. The American media would rather talk about race or perversion or anything else considered taboo before class.

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.

Empathy is a human trait. But lots of humans exercise some traits more energetically than others. By "the usefulness of empathy" I mean the way in which a progressive might claim that empathy is a crucial aspect of any benign political system, and the way a conservative might argue that not only is it not necessary, but it might not even be all that helpful, in that regard.

I think there's a playfulness and a distance to Kavalier and Clay that I don't aspire to in my stuff. Maybe I'm more old-fashioned, and less of a fabulist, in that way.

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