I've been an advocate against the view of the writer as a partitioned genius hanging in conceptual space, or up on a mountain, a bringer of Promethean fire, some unique transmission that comes out of nowhere. I prefer the opposite view - that writers come from somewhere. They read things, and they think about them, and they incorporate other people's thoughts.

There were days when no kid came out of his house without looking around. The week after Halloween had a quality both hungover and ominous, the light pitched, the sky smashed against the rooftops.

Poetry is supposed to be musical. But people don't understand prose. They're so used to reading journalism - clunky, functional sentences that convey factual information - facts, more than just the surfaces of things.

I've had the odd good luck of starting slowly and building gradually, something few writers are allowed anymore. As a result I've seen each of my books called the breakthrough. And each was, in its way.

Novelists get to direct the perfect films. We get to cast every part. We dress the set exactly as we wish.

The level at which my OCD enters my writing process isn't that I slap the keyboard - it's more along the lines of a compulsive need to swap syllables around, rework words and sentences - I revise for the pleasure and satisfaction of it, rather than out of a sense of duty.

Music still sort of hangs up there in the sky for me as this thing that moves me so much, but I can't really make it. It's like a car I can't drive.