The literary world is more time-traveling than the art world, and novelty is much more important in art than it is in writing.

Ulysses pissed me off. When Molly Bloom just says, "Yes I said yes I will Yes." And I'm thinking, You should be saying no, Molly. How about no? Saying no is great.

Kafka wrote the great line: "my education has damaged me in ways I do not even know." And that's always been a signature motto for me.

If you're a "good" teacher, somebody who is responsible or careful, teaching takes time. Teaching is performative. Students nowadays evaluate you and there's a lot made in these evaluations about how you perform. Maybe you don't have the greatest delivery in the world. But you know a lot, have a lot to offer. So that's pretty unsettling. We've become so image-based and performance-based as a society. You have to be ready to appear on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" at any moment.

My friends and I sometimes laugh at each other that there is so much maintenance of a body. I paid no attention when I was younger.

Whatever the style is, I want to have a sense that the writer is thinking, and really trying to get at something, and that there's a sense of discovery as the writing goes along.

As a reader myself, which precedes my being a writer, of course, I read in order to enter another world.