As I get older, I'm finding that I recognize certain celebrities only because they frequently grace the pages of US Weekly, but beyond that, I have no idea what they do.

I think that absurdity in literature looks into a lack of meaning in some important and fundamental way. It allows us to ask questions in ways that other forms can't, or in ways we can't using solely traditional means.

As soon as you start to question your own intent while you're still in the process of discovering your story, you're in trouble because you've pulled out of that unconscious space that is so necessary in the beginning of the drafting process.

I think there's a fine line between being so obtuse that you lose the reader completely, which is the intention for some writers, though it isn't mine. I work hard at grounding the world as much as possible in the world we do recognize.

I think it's still difficult to write about motherhood and anxiety, that talking about not wanting to be a mother or feeling ambivalent about motherhood makes people uneasy. The ambivalent mother is certainly much more interesting.

I'm not conscious of my own themes as I write first drafts, no, and in fact, I work hard to stay in that unconscious space and not ask myself what the novel is about or what my metaphors might mean because then, I think, you're just dead in the water.

Fundamentally I think we all write the kinds of work we'd most like to read. Or we try to.