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.

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

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.

I just write what I want to read, and sometimes keeping it interesting means adding one more element that ends up adding another year to the work.

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

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.

There's some evidence that before events of mass trauma, even unpredictable ones, people begin to feel higher anxiety, often expressed in terms specific to the event.