Plays are just all sort of playful asides, and there's a great deal of reference here to Greek mythology, plays, and dramas. The idea of the chorus is really important in Greek drama and I loved the idea of including that.

You had to pick up a landline to make sure your best friend wore a matching outfit to school. I do remember people talking more. Nostalgia is dangerous, though.

When I write a new draft, I don't like to feel I'm tied to any previous version. That's why I don't use a computer to write. The text looks, on the screen, too much like a book. It's not a book - it's a bad first draft of something that could one day be a book.

As soon as you publish a book and the reader reads it, they're making an extension of your brain with their brain.

Sometimes you have to let time carry you past your troubles.

I won't walk under scaffolding or under ladders. I wear things like a baseball player wears things that are supposed to have luck. I am superstitious about everything.

Parenthood means becoming comfortable with the fact that there are things outside your control, things that end and fail, just as most utopias end and by some measure fail. And just because they're a failure doesn't mean there isn't value there.