We want to know that we're not alone with our loneliness or loss.

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

Paranoia can be a sign of a sanity in some circumstances, in some places and times.

The novel's not the best form for disposing ideas, though that's one thing it can do. It likely is the best form, though, for conveying the experience of us each being alone, trapped in our skulls with only these bodies and this imperfect instrument of language to convey our state and to find meaning and connection.

Toronto is hard to capture in a few strokes.

I like a great degree of compression. I like to mix lateral steps with forward ones. I don't want the prose ever to feel simply functional - at least not for any stretch.

The real past can traumatize us, but so can the real future.