I don't tell everything. I want the reader to have the feeling that maybe they know the whole truth, but they don't.

I had a deep prejudice against the South. It's taken me many years to get over that, be more open and thoughtful.

That's the beauty and the terror of being human beings: We just have these symbolic languages, these dreams, and that's all it ever is.

Things seem to fall apart inevitably.

Everything is up for grabs, everything is relative. Except nothing is if you are serious about it because the moment you become serious about answering a question you have a stake in it. Relatively goes out of the window, in one sense because you're putting your a** out there - you are depending on the answer, you need the answer.

The hardship, the pain, the suffering of my brother and my son in prison, that's absolutely their experience, that's not mine. I don't get any credit for enduring that. I never give myself any credit for enduring that.

As a writer, you don't know what the hell you're doing. You're just doing it. You hope it works out well.