A novel is a performance you have to plan.

Literature is a mystical place for me. It's not dry. It's where miracles happen.

Diagnoses exist to help get people services they need - but there's no such thing as mental illness. We're all mentally ill.

I start writing, pull whatever images happen to occur to me and make up a story, instead of starting with details that are real and I know of and going from there.

I always worry that I'm a dilettante: I know something about lots of things but don't have exhaustive knowledge of much.

As important as politics are to me, the life and the spirit of people's emotions are much more important. People live real lives where they love and grieve and feel pain and joy and that is a whole separate sphere. All that political stuff, I believe in it strongly, but not as strongly as I believe that at some point you or someone is going to need a song to sit with and comfort them in a hard time.

For me, moving is always a big opportunity. Its just a enough of a shift in outlook that every time I move, it seems to open something up.