Yet I'm making a book and I'm going to care immensely about what words get bound in the pages, and I want the object to look good. I won't believe in it and it won't be real to me until there's a finished book I can hold.

The arts and a belief in the values of the civil rights movement, in the overwhelming virtue of diversity, these were our religion. My parents worshipped those ideals.

I'd have been a filmmaker or a cartoonist or something else which extended from the visual arts into the making of narratives if I hadn't been able to shift into fiction.

Every artist has limits. No one can do everything. It's impossible.

As much as I care about historical context - I'm very eager to read a really great historical account.

For me, music is sort of the art that I can't incorporate into my person the way I want to.

You don’t have the slightest idea of what it means to write a scene and a character in the English language, with images and words chock full of received meaning.