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.

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.

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.

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.

The Peruvian flute music is . . . cool. In this music, they have not yet invented the industrial revolution that leads to excessive punctuality or the failed experiment they call the nuclear family. This is the music of elements, untarnished, unrehearsed.

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