I still do believe that form and content are very much related. I think throwing away some of the rule books on that is a good thing.

There's not usually one reason why we do anything and, in fact, often we don't know why we've done what we've done, especially what we have said or why, for instance, in conversation, which can be very tricky. Finally, we say something and think, "Why did we say that?" In retrospect we might know.

I do think we think repetitively. It's so hard to get certain thoughts out of your head. If you're angry at a friend, you're going to keep going back to that conversation.

I'm interested in reality but I'm not interested in realism at all. I'm interested in the ways that I think people want to relate.

I think that sense of surprise, that you don't know where something is going, or what's going to happen, even as you write, that you're making it up as you go along - that's important to me. It's not a question of shock or surprise in a gimmicky way. It's that as you read, you become more deeply into something and into what happens, and become more involved and engaged, you're learning something or you're appreciating something or seeing something differently - that's what's surprising.

Any writer knows that what's left out is as essential, if not more so, than what's there. Unlearning works that way.

I unlearned the model of being an editor like Ezra Pound with T.S. Eliot, the unconscious belief that America was the center of the world, and that honesty meant saying what I thought and always being direct.