Conversation on the page should reflect what the story is about. It doesn't have to be "realistic" in the sense that it's something you heard and plugged into a story.

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.

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's easy, at this point in my life, very easy to write a beautiful sentence that's meaningless. A lot of writers do that. But I don't want it to be meaningless. I want it to actually say what I want it to say, and so I'm thinking about it again and again and again.

People are less focused on the story, and more on how the story is told.

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.

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.