When I write, I wear earplugs. I don't want to be self-conscious. I don't want to be thinking about the fact that I'm thinking about it. I just want to be in it. It's one element of hypnosis.

It was a small thing, but it was a thing, and things have a way of either dying or growing, and it wasn’t dying.

I like embracing kind of normal forms but am always trying to approach them as if no one's ever done that before. As if I'm literally the first person to ever write a book.

I'm interested in what the virtues of all those things are, especially for the kind of person who's made their own world that revolves around them, like writers do. It seems especially precious.

Things usually make sense in time, and even bad decisions have their own kind of correctness.

Making a movie: It's so hard. It's the hardest of all the things I do.

Some people are uncomfortable with silences. Not me. I’ve never cared much for call and response. Sometimes I will think of something to say and then I ask myself: is it worth it? And it just isn’t.