I'm asking the reader to suspend reality with me and entertain the idea that the person writing is not me. In order to do that well, I think, one needs to point out the artifice of the narrative. Somehow if the narrator is self-aware then it's almost more humanizing and more relatable.

In fiction the narrator is a performance of voice, and it can be any style of voice, but I'm interested in the ways that a voice that knows it's telling a story is actually telling a different story than it intends to. In the way that I can sit here and tell you what I had for breakfast, but I'm really telling you that I'm having an affair, something like that. And I don't think my writing is plain, but I think a lot of my characters are just talking. There is vulnerability there, in that we can start to see through them, we can start to see where they're deceiving themselves.

I love art because I feel that it's evidence of the great shared universal power. I like art that feels real, that cuts the bullshit.

For me, I enjoy intimidating people and I enjoy being intimidated. It is exciting. It's cool to have an experience with someone where you challenge them, and they are afraid, and then they love you and they've grown. When that happens to me, I feel so blessed if somebody has opened my world up a little bit more.

I don't really pity any of my characters. I hold my characters under a harsh fluorescent lamp and ask "Who are you?" I'm not doing their makeup or giving them hairdos. They present themselves to me as they are and then I let them say what they want. Usually they're saying something too honest.

For me writing isn't a mental exercise, it's barely even a literary exercise, it feels like a spiritual experience.

I don't like talking too much about my personal life, but it all goes into my work.