In the rural South, the only interesting people were the sexual deviants. Everybody else was able to be part of the mainstream, and could find a way somehow.

I wanted to hear my own whispers in the next room and know that I was thinking of me.

I never take pictures. Skies are much larger in reminiscences and my friends are much better-looking. Photos crop reality into little squares; instead, I have very good binoculars.

I'd say it's never a challenge to present white and heteronormative privilege. The hard thing is to write any other way.

Whatever I was writing at the time, I knew there was no market for it and never would be, because there’s never a market for true art, so my main concern was always to have a job that didn’t require me to write or think.

My social status in the last year has gone from zero to hero.

What's important is the tolerance. If people are not beating other people up, or shooting them for being different, then that's progress. Even if the ideas that go through their head are fodder for novelists.