I would drink gallons of coffee a day. Even now, off caffeine, I talk faster than anyone you've ever met. I finally recognized that I'm naturally amped up. But when I quit I was worried that I would never write again. It was like anyone who's kicked a habit. I was in a blanket shivering, trying to kick the horse.

I literally feel like books saved my life. I found these people. Me reading Camus and Kafka, all of the tortured teenager stuff of someone who's falling in love with books. These people, these writers had the questions. They may not have had the answers, but they're not afraid to look at the questions head on. It was just life-changing for me. Yeah, books, honestly, I can't even tell you. I feel saved by books; I feel like they let me be who I was and find the world I wanted to be in.

I sometimes think about that, when I finish in something big I find it even hard, I feel like I lose an actual noticeable percentage of my reading time. Even on the reader end I find it so hard when a book that I love so much ends, to find the kindness to enter into a new one. Do you know what I'm saying? To find my way in, I feel like even there's that space after. I just love inhabiting a book that hits right.

What interests me when I'm writing is being able to crawl into a character's head and speak from his or her mouth. It's not pulling the strings on a marionette, it's not playing ventriloquist, and it's not mimicry. It's about inhabiting a character, and, at the same time, being totally unaware of what you've become.

Turn off your cell phone. Honestly, if you want to get work done, you’ve got to learn to unplug. No texting, no email, no Facebook, no Instagram. Whatever it is you’re doing, it needs to stop while you write... A lot of the time (and this is fully goofy to admit), I’ll write with earplugs in - even if it’s dead silent at home.

To me, when one is writing sometimes about a very specific subject with very specific people, I feel like if that story doesn't cross over, it's not working. That's very beautiful to me, to be sitting in Berlin and there's an actor reading my book in German. I don't even know what's going on, except I know to feel my own rhythms in another language and say, "If this is going well, I think everyone should laugh around now." Then maybe there's laughter, and for me, it reminds me of how story can move around the world.

I think books can cure cancer and grow back hair. I can't say it enough. For me, that's why it's so syrupy. It's both syrupy and over the top, and overly sincere, and also dead true. What else can I tell you? A writer can't catch a cab half the time, but when there's a demagogue, when there's a government that wants to suppress, there's a reason that writers end up getting in trouble. It's such a subversive form that can really change people.