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

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

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.

I love poetry, read it a lot, but make no claim to being able to write it.

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

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.