People really want to believe that there is no fiction. I think they find it much easier to imagine that novelists are writing memoirs, writing about their lives, because it's difficult to conceive that there's a great imaginary life in which you can participate.

I've always been entranced with theater.

I think of memory as a game, that is as something one engages in with a very profound kind of "playfulness."

I guess I can picture things once they're done - I just can't picture actually doing them.

My relationship with my readers is somewhat theatrical. One of the main things I try to do in my work is delight my readers.

I always thought of my work as being animated by a spirit of unhinged generosity.

You are fiercely heterosexual and well-formed, and it's no one's business that you've shrunk your parents and keep them in a terranium, but you have a gatling gun for a mouth, and if that's a diary you're producing from your cleavage, I'm leaving.