When I complete a novel I set it aside, and begin work on short stories, and eventually another long work. When I complete that novel I return to the earlier novel and rewrite much of it. In the meantime the second novel lies in a desk drawer.

Food doesn't exist, but can only be invented. And reinvented.

Art is the highest expression of the human spirit.

If I'm writing, I'll say something metaphorical or approximate, whereas scientists are very precise.

Yet the fact had no consciousness of itself except through me.

For what are the words with which to summarize a lifetime, so much crowded confused happiness terminated by such stark slow-motion pain?

For the writer, the serial killer is, abstractly, an analogue of the imagination's caprices and amorality; the sense that, no matter the dictates and even the wishes of the conscious social self, the life or will or purpose of the imagination is incomprehensible, unpredictable.