I have a feeling that books are a lot like people - they change as you age, so that some books that you hated in high school will strike you with the force of a revelation when you're older.

I feel like in American fiction we're moving out of a period of intense irony, and I'm very glad about that. I feel like irony is fine for its own sake but shouldn't be the sole reason to write a book. It has been an ironic world view: that's the best way I can describe it. I'm a fan of earnestness. I feel like there's a new wave of earnestness and I'd be happy if I'm some small part of that.

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.

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

If there's a black cat that crosses the street in my path, I will turn around and walk 20 minutes out of my way to not cross it.

Even still, we run. We have not reached our average of 57.92 years without knowing that you run through it, and it hurts and you run through it some more, and if it hurts worse, you run through it even more, and when you finish, you will have broken through. In the end, when you are done, and stretching, and your heartbeat slows, and your sweat dries, if you've run through the hard part, you will remember no pain.

When I was small and easily wounded books were my carapace. If I were recalled to my hurts in the middle of a book they somehow mattered less. My corporeal life was slight the dazzling one in my head was what really mattered. Returning to books was coming home.