I don't do all that well in the writerly world. I'm happier being outside the flow.

Maybe the Kindle was the Bowflex of bookishness: something expensive that, when you commit to it, forces you to do more of whatever it is you think you should be doing more of.

In the novel, I can change things and simplify, and make events work towards whatever meanings I'm trying to get at more efficiently.

When I really want to be soothed and reminded of why people bother to fiddle with sentences, I often read poetry.

I'm a sucker for interiors and carefully, beautifully filmed people sitting in a big room. My appetites are simple.

I wanted my first novel to be a veritable infarct of narrative cloggers-the trick being to feel your way through each clog by blowing it up until its obstructiveness finally reveals not blank mass but unlooked-for seepage points of passage.

I hadn't played any music since freshman year of college, more than thirty years ago, so I had to relearn everything. I started writing songs. Some were dance and trance songs (I listen to them a lot while I'm writing), and some were love songs, because that after all is what music is about - dancing and trancing and love and love's setbacks.