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

Human beings are just way more complex than they'd like to be. They like to be simple machines. And they'll set up fantasy scenarios where they're simple machines, and get hurt and do things they regret.

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.

People wanted to get me published, and my early work was so weird that they weren't getting anywhere. I thought, okay, I'll do something that's just a tad more normal.

The interesting artists I know are the ones doing political work. The most interesting people I know are the people who care about politics.

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

I have known many people who were seduced as children by same-sex partners and then spent their teen years being gay, and then found their way back to heterosexuality as adults.