Freedom or community, community or freedom. One must decide the way one wants to live. I chose community.

As with most of my work, I started from the abstract, from research, building an intellectual model that slowly became internalized when the characters came alive. It's fascinating what happens to the model you've so assiduously assembled when characters are allowed to run rampant: things you thought essential are broken and other things are vastly improved.

I try not to think too much or be too impatient, and let the back of my brain do its mysterious work.

Everything is cyclical. Historical eras go through times of intense cynicism, broken by periods of intense idealism.

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.

As a person, I do ascribe to a lot of magical thinking myself.

I think that writers have natural canvases, and my canvas, even in short stories, often seems to be the scope of a life.