I suppose in a way most of my characters are non-consumers, not terribly interested in all the little baubles and artifacts of contemporary life.

Every book is a kind of experiment in doing something that feels impossible.

Being blocked, being uncertain, sitting there not knowing, waiting, abiding with it: this is the work. If you don't have the tolerance for that you're in great trouble. If you want to call it a writer's block... that doesn't seem a very useful name for that kind of abiding that I think is the essence of the work.

I don't know why the world has changed so much that writers are now expected to appear in public and talk about their work. It's something I find very difficult. And yet, one does have some sense of responsibility towards one's publishers, to the people trying to sell the book.

The book is openly a kind of spiritual autobiography, but the trick is that on any other level it's a kind of insane collage of fragments of memory.

When people call something "original," 9 out of 10 times they just don't know the references or original sources involved.

I don't want to indulge myself in the luxury of writing beautiful paragraphs just for the sake of making beautiful writing. That doesn't interest me. I want everything to be essential.