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

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.

So much of the way books get classified has to do with marketing decisions. I think it's more useful to think of literary books and sci-fi/fantasy books as existing on a continuum.

Fiction helps me to reconnect with the true, deep weirdness inherent in everyday reality, in our dealings with one another, in just being alive.

You small mortals don't realize the power of your stories.

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

Once you figure out what's best for the story, take out the rest.