I would never want to write a character who was not thoroughly herself or himself. She's a very specific creature in my mind, and she has her thoughts, which range from skin to American history, philosophy, and the arts.

I'm not interested in safety. A great risk in writing is imagining you have something to protect. Playing it safe to placate someone or something. People talk about compromise, but often people don't even know when they're compromising, because they're not conscious of contradictions.

You have to create the space for the possibility of people speaking as they do. If writing is supposed to lead us in any way or educate or suggest other ways of being, it can't do so by simply reflecting what's considered to be realistic. I'm not a realist in that way.

Desire is a word I'm tired of. I've been living with that word for years. Yes, of course, we're all desiring machines. I have sometimes wondered what people would want, if there were no advertising. And death, what other subject is there? It's the subject. It's our subject. It's the great human dilemma, that we die and know we will.

I would never want to write a character who was not thoroughly herself or himself. She's a very specific creature in my mind, and she has her thoughts, which range from skin to American history, philosophy, and the arts.

There are lots of unlikable characters in literature. It doesn't mean they're not fascinating.

I'm very interested in animal behavior, and the relationship of human beings to other animal behavior.