'The Accursed' is very much a novel about social injustice as the consequence of the terrible, tragic division of classes - the exploitation not only of poor and immigrant workers but of their young children in factories and mills - and as the consequence of race hatred in the aftermath of the Civil War and the freeing of the slaves.

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

The ideal art, the noblest of art: working with the complexities of life, refusing to simplify, to "overcome" doubt.

I was writing novels in high school and apprenticed myself in a way both to Faulkner and to Hemingway.

God's blessing is not always to be distinguished from His wrath.

...[I am] utterly entranced, at times, with the mere fact that there are other people, and that they experience themselves as the primary center of consciousness just as I do. That fact alone...Well, that fact alone is staggering.

I love insult, it's always honest.