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.

Women are defined by their biography, and men are sacrosanct from their biography.

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.

If you can be anything else but a writer, be it.

Like I'm dragging bundles of old clothes? I'm carrying artifacts that breathe fire. I'm talking about a language of smoke. These are three-dimensional creatures that can mate. I'd no more leave them go by the side of the trail than I would my child. I'll carry them until someone amputates my arms.

I know California isn't a real destination. You can't get there from New Jersey, not simply by following a line drawn on a map. The process of arrival is more subtle and complex. It involves acts of contrition. You must appease the gods. You must find novel forms of penance. You must tattoo your children and look at the wonder. It's about conjuring and awakening and intuitions you wish you never had.

All good writing is built one good line at a time. You build a novel the same way you do a pyramid. One word, one stone at a time, underneath a full moon while the fingers bleed.