It's important to write like your readers are brilliant.

It was important to buy into the fact that the nine hundred pages an end-reader never sees are just as valuable as the ones that are bound and placed on the shelf.

I'm a semi-failed writer, but I'm a capital-F Failed musician.

I'm always working on something. Addiction never gets any credit, always talked about as a total liability, and I'll admit that most of its traits aren't positive in our lives. But there's one amazing thing it gave me: a tireless work ethic.

The point of reading is to inhabit a consciousness that doesn't belong to the reader, immersing yourself in a life that's wholly realized. And a huge facet of our psychic and existential make-ups is the things we're not proud of, things we didn't ask to experience, the scenarios we flubbed.

My job as the novelist is to present the whole case, then the reader gets to render her verdict.

Shamefulness is always a huge part of my characterizations. I like protagonists that reveal, either through "honesty" in their various thought processes or via their actions, perhaps telling us things they're not so keen on disclosing through their interactions with the outside world. Probably both during the duration of a novel.