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.

However appalling to consider, however tedious to enact, every novel requires furniture, whether it is to be named or unnamed, for the characters will be unable to remain in standing position for the duration of the story.

I'm not too embarrassed to say I'm the definition of the target audience. This is my generation, the one of exalting music in album form.

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

Writing is a necessity and often a pleasure, but at the same time, it can be a great burden and a terrible struggle.

I'm not planning what I listen to, except when I think the music can guide me to some emotional place I want to be reminded of.

Insomnia is a variant of Tourette's--the waking brain races, sampling the world after the world has turned away, touching it everywhere, refusing to settle, to join the collective nod. The insomniac brain is a sort of conspiracy theorist as well, believing too much in its own paranoiac importance--as though if it were to blink, then doze, the world might be overrun by some encroaching calamity, which its obsessive musings are somehow fending off.