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.

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.

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

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

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

We're getting used to reality and fantasy passing into each other. Much of the border between them has been erased.