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.

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

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.

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

There are terrible things that never get easier, and there are things even more terrible that get easier with time and repetition.

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.