In my experience, whatever happens clings to us like barnacles on the hull of a ship, slowing us slightly, both uglifying and giving us texture. You can scrape all you want, you can, if you have money, hire someone else to scrape, but the barnacles will come back or at least leave a blemish on the steel.

I get inspired by my friends, and if a friend is a writer, that is even deeper.

There are many ways to drown, only the most obvious wave their arms as they're going under.

Everything we do, I'd imagine, influences everything we will do.

By the time I make my way to the border of Mauritania, to the edge of the Sahara, I see no end to being lost. You can spend your entire life simply falling in that direction. It isn't a station you reach but just the general state of going down. Once you make it back, if you make it back, you will stand before your long-lost friends but in some essential way they will no longer know you.

Perhaps everyone has a story that could break your heart.

When I was a child, writing was the worst possible choice of a career in my family.