When I'm choosing things, there's a level of intelligence I want to peel off, whether it's written in terribly simple sentences, whether it's from the point of view of a dog, or a 15-year-old boy.

In depression, you're flattened. Your energy level is gone. When I'm anxious, I tend to have more energy. But it depends on the nature of the anxiety. The anxiety to finish something would seem to be more productive than the anxiety that says, "You're feeling sick."

It wasn't that I wanted to be an artist. But when I took my first drawing class with the painter Doug Ohlson, I could never finish a drawing.

Whether they're ghosts of great writers or people I loved - some died because of AIDS, others under mysterious circumstances - I don't want to forget these people, ever. That's very much a part of my still being alive - to remember those who aren't here anymore.

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.

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

I subject my sentences and the words to a kind of Grand Inquisition. I'm trying always to leave out what I think is extraneous. And to find what I think is the most wonderful language to make a beautiful sentence. Not beautiful in the sense of "oh it's flowy" but in the sense that it really does what it's supposed to do, it what I want it to say.