I think it's very important for writers and artists generally to be witnesses to the world, and to be transparent. To let other people speak... to travel... to experience the world. And memorialize it.

The despairing soul is a rebel.

Don't try to anticipate an ideal reader - or any reader. He/she might exist - but is reading someone else.

I always rewrite the very beginning of a novel. I rewrite the beginning as I write the ending, so I may spend part of morning writing the ending, the last 100 pages approximately, and then part of the morning revising the beginning. So the style of the novel has a consistency.

Loneliness is like starvation: you don't realize how hungry you are until you begin to eat.

If I try to summon back his face, the sound of his voice, and the sensation in my stomach like a key turning in a lock when he touched me, I lose everything.

When you give up struggle, there's a kind of love.