If you look at communal experiments in general for any amount of time, you'll find a lot of horrors: raped children, sexual slavery, eugenics experiments, on and on.

Research is about following the gleam into the dark. It's also about being sensitive enough to know which fact is "the creative fact; the fertile fact; the fact that suggests and engenders," as opposed to the fact that deadens and kills a delicate new project.

It's wonderful that nothing you write is ever going to be as beautiful as what's in your head, because that gap is where the art can enter and begin to stretch its limbs.

Sex is a good starting point for everything.

A lot of my work comes from a place of despair or fear. I often write in order to gain some sort of control over aspects of my life or the world that seem too dark to look at directly.

I like people, I really do. I like meeting people. But most of the time I would rather be at home reading a book than reading in a bookstore. It's a performance, and it ends up being all right, and then you have a nice shot of bourbon afterwards, and it's all good. I want to please people. I want to be nice. I want to be liked. As a result I say yes to everything. But it takes a lot of vital energy out of me.

While writing, writers are living inside a character or characters, and when the book ekes into the world, writers are living inside the reader. That's more than connecting.