One thing in my defense, not that it matters: I know something Carter never knew, or Helene, or maybe you. I know what "nothing" means, and keep on playing.

I know something about dread myself, and appreciate the elaborate systems with which some people fill the void, appreciate all the opiates of the people, whether they are as accessible as alcohol and heroin and promiscuity or as hard to come by as faith in God or History.

We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images.

When you're writing fiction, you don't have notes necessarily. You don't carve it, it's not like a piece of sculpture, it's more like water color.

If you want to understand what you're thinking, you kind of have to work it through and write it. And the only way to work it through, for me, is to write it.

When I am near the end of a book, I have to sleep in the same room with it.

I know what the fear is. The fear is not for what is lost. What is lost is already in the wall. What is lost is already behind the locked doors. The fear is for what is still to be lost.