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

Sometimes it can feel like the whole globe is spinning with irredeemable losses, capricious natural disasters and crimes so outrageously evil they dismantle any attempt to solve or explain them.

I want a real encounter with something true and disconcerting about peoples' natures.

Given the brevity of our time here, it does seem likely that our species, too, must have at best a blinkered understanding of the shape of things, the import of certain events and what distinguishes "good" from "bad" luck.

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.

There are certain prehistoric things that swim beyond extinction.

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