I know books that are really good and writers that are really good and they have become oppressed and ground down from the rejection and they stop. Either they stop writing or they have these books in their drawers. I know that for a fact.

Don't you think almost anything can be funny? Almost anything.

Writers like Twain, Whitman, Dickinson, Melville, Louise Erdrich, Toni Morrison, Russell Banks, Carolyn Chute, Alice Walker, so many others that I read coming up as a writer, that helped form my ideas of what it means to be American - and an American writer. I'm always in conversation with them.

I don't make fun of my characters. I just like to laugh and I think people are funny and the world is funny.

The "we" voice is rare, and the communal impulse of the "we" is interesting to me.

My natural tendency is to fall in love with language and character and setting, and kind of forget about pacing. Narrative tension doesn't come naturally to me, and if it does feel fast-paced that makes me incredibly happy.

I laugh when I'm writing. I feel like all my work is funny to me.