Whenever I get lost in a novel I just throw a poem in. What it does is flare up, and it's so illuminated that I'm able to see where to go. I write between these illuminations.

I knew a book of mine was finished when I was in intensive care.

I write a lot by sound. One sound leads me to another. These sounds aren't random; they have their own logic.

Writing is like hunting. There are brutally cold afternoons with nothing in sight, only the wind and your breaking heart. Then the moment when you bag something big. The entire process is beyond intoxicating.

I believed in immaculate conception and spontaneous combustion. I believed in aliens from outer space and vampires, prophecy, and the resurrection of the dead. I had deja vu many times each day. I was thirteen.

Just being in a room with myself is almost more stimulation than I can bear.

All my friends are artists, so I am used to collective agony as a mode.