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.

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.

There's relief in white space for the reader.

Portland is a pretty magnificent place to live.

I started reading contemporary fiction in college or right after college. It wasn't as if I was steeped in experimental minimalism when I was twelve or something. I was reading The Witch of Blackbird Pond.

As someone who played music and never got famous, and remembers little fragments of that, I don't remember life as a dramatic flamboyant thing.

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