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

I am fascinated by tiny, incremental changes, almost imperceptible shifts in how people orient themselves in the world, because those are in some ways the most hopeful.

Even while I was working on the novel I would also write short stories as relief, just to be in a wieldier world that could negotiated more easily and more quickly. In the novel, I even changed the narrator from a man to a woman.

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."

Even in so-called realist or conventional writing there can be defamiliarization.

There's relief in white space for the reader.

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