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.

The idea that language can be recombined to create new forms, new things, is of course very old in poetry.

Many of the concepts we once thought belonged to speculation or science fiction are now part of our understood reality.

Trauma, and certain important experiences, can imprint on us at a genetic level.

Science is claiming ever more ground from popular stories of the kind we thought we weren't to believe in.

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.

I seem always to have two or three novels going at once. It takes me a long time to finish one.