Art is about eliminating almost everything in order to focus on the thing that you need to talk about.

I don't write about anything I don't love even if that love sometimes gets all screwed up and tormented.

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

Reading and writing are the same thing; it's just one's the more active and the other's the more passive. They flow into each other.

I can't bear the silent ringing in my skull.

I've just finished reading Reality Hunger and I'm lit up by it-astonished, intoxicated, ecstatic, overwhelmed. . . . It really is an urgent book: a piece of art-making itself, a sublime, exciting, outrageous, visionary volume.

I hate feeling too complacent when I write. I like to be solving new problems.