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.

Sometimes I read a biography of some tempestuous artist and find myself longing for fireworks! booze! bloody fights!; I do think that life must be so much more thrilling when you're actively miserable.

I see history as really cyclical in terms of the intense idealism, and the desire to create a better life outside of societal norms.

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.

I don't believe that fiction is dead. I know there are some people who believe that it's an outdated art form, and that to express truth today you need to work in different forms, to write books where it's perhaps not clear what's fiction and what's memoir. I have nothing against those books and love many of them very much. But we have enough space for everyone, traditional realists and hybrid writers, and experimental writers all.

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

But I've married a deeply sensible person who is extremely good at talking me down from my various ledges, and who takes care of me in a billion ways.