Novels seem to exist because of this need to know and connect, and so story becomes charged with necessity.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Many of the concepts we once thought belonged to speculation or science fiction are now part of our understood reality.