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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.