I have friends who are capable of writing a very rough draft and then going back and embroidering - they're sort of the cathedral builders of fiction. I never really know what I'm doing, and all my pleasure's on the level of the line. It's a weird way to move forward. It's kind of like a way to caterpillar your way through these great woods. The best ones, whatever I feel like I'm writing about, some other secret thing will begin to come into focus.

I do think that I have a more flexible view of the interactions between people, and between human and non-human protagonists, humans and their landscapes.

I didn’t realize that one tragedy can beget another, and another — bright-eyed disasters flooding out of a death hole like bats out of a cave.

No, I don’t have to tell a soul about this, I promised myself. When you are a kid, you don’t know yet that a secret, like an animal, can evolve. Like an animal, a secret can develop a self-preserving intelligence. Shaglike, mute and thick, a knowledge with a fur: your secret.

It remains unbelievable to me that I have any readers beyond my own blood relations - it's a crazy, wild gift.

I really try to write every day. It's hard, but it's my favorite thing to do. So, it's usually not too, too hard.

My favorite classes were always dumb nerdy vocabulary.