We're getting used to reality and fantasy passing into each other. Much of the border between them has been erased.

Novels seem to exist because of this need to know and connect, and so story becomes charged with necessity.

Toronto is hard to capture in a few strokes.

I'm not even sure if empathy is an act, it could be a disposition.

We're getting used to reality and fantasy passing into each other. Much of the border between them has been erased.

We can't write a serious novel in the 21st century without acknowledging the inescapable self-awareness we're stuck with. The idea we're surrounded by falsehoods and lies. It's hard for the thinking person to believe in narratives. And yet we want some place to invest our belief.

It's fiction's job to express how it feels to be living now, and it's a complex feeling, full of contradiction. To me it often feels like a brutal trivialization of reality.