I think what happened to me was that I was always being taught to look, but one day I started to see. And it was because a lot of women in my life were refusing just to be looked at, to be this passive figure.

In my mind what novels do best is that they immerse us deeply into our character's world - they truly transport us deep into these spaces - but the same way you know a Hollywood movie won't end after thirty minutes, you carry in yourself the implicit contract that the novel won't throw you out of itself 'til the very end. That bulk of pages is a form of consolation, of security.

The greatest myth of all is what America is. I think that America is such an incredibly dynamic place because of immigration.

My art feels like it's real disobedient. I can fill notebooks with observations and maybe they find their way into the work unconsciously, which is great. I've never been able to directly plug, like to take a little snip that I've picked up on the street and transfer it into a story. I don't know what's wrong, but it never works that way.

If you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level any reflection of themselves

[Donald] Trump is what happens in America every time it feels economically and politically threatened, and it encounters the limitations of its own white supremacists practices.

Love was a rare thing, easily confused with a million other things, and if anybody knew this to be true it was him.