If there's a theme in my work, it's that I like to focus on smart people who are facing oppression and who are fighting back against it.

New York makes me swoony and in love. The New York of the 1880s was a place where black eye fixers did a brisk business and people were routinely killed for their shoes. But, the constant aspiration of the city never changes.

I feel like the traditional patron system meant that you would kiss the ass of one rich person and then hide all of the financial goings-on of your work, and you could pretend you were pure.

When virtue was spoken of in the classical sense, for men, it always meant bravery or protecting others or being an adventurer and going out into the world - whereas a woman's virtue meant keeping her legs closed.

I didn't want to be beholden to one person. So I did something where I had hundreds of people who backed the work. I could just do work, and since a lot of people were interested in it, I wasn't beholden to any particular one of them.

I can't reasonably pretend to be a transparent and omniscient narrator who brings no personal perspective. That person doesn't exist.

The thing that I hate is that Nicholas Kristof style of writing where it's like, "I saw the poor, they made me so sad. What can I do about sadness? I am so brave." It's just like, shut up, man, shut up.