Sometimes you just feel like you could work forever on something and never know when it's done.

If a synesthetic person says the letter a is green, it can't ever be anything but green.

I find myself writing protagonists who do feel pretty cut off from others but who want to make connections and aren't very good at it.

For me, the genders are an essential element of numbers and letters, not something that could be removed from them.

Another obligation that I have as a teacher is to make available to students a range of options and devices and approaches, rather than saying "well here's one way to do it and that's the only way that's good."

In undergraduate classes, I often see writers who are still simply imitating. I mean, we all imitate - that's how we learn to speak or write in the first place - but they're writing a Dean Koontz novel or something.

Giving the reader the space to move around and be active, and encourage their active response is important to me. That will connect the reader more to the text.