When I'm drafting, I suppose it's an intuitive process - figuring out when something just has a surreal glaze on it and when it grapples with something that could threaten a character's day-to-day reality.

Somehow I wasn't adding up right anymore. My parts weren't summing into myself.

I moved to New York with the derangement of love. I was writing all these terrible stories, but I had never been happier.

A food truce, the picnic suspension of oedipal feeling that permits the generations to love each other at family reunions.

If you're gonna do something weird, just have one thing be weird.

I had been eagerly waiting just such a disaster. Storms, wolves, snakebite, floods-these are the occasions to find out how your father sees you, how strong and necessary he thinks you are.

When you're a kid, it's hard to tell the innocuous secrets from the ones that will kill you if you keep them.