I wrote Report from the Interior was that after I finished Winter Journal, I took a pause, and I realized there was more I wanted to say.

When I am writing, even though it's hard and I do struggle often, I am happier than when I'm not writing. I feel alive. Whereas when I'm not writing, I feel like your common every-day neurotic.

I don't read reviews any more, but I'm told by my publisher who gives me an account of what people have been writing and it's been a very split kind of response.

Farts come from no one and nowhere; they are anonymous emanations that belong to the group as a whole, and even when every person in the room can point to the culprit, the only sane course of action is denial.

Nobody asks you to do this. The world out there is not panting after another novelist. We choose it

There's love, and certainly children you care about more than yourself. But nevertheless, we're alone in our heads.

Things have not changed as much as we would like to think they have. Or maybe we're just in another one of the divided moments in the country. The late '60s certainly was one of them, the Civil War being another, but I'm hard-pressed to think of too many.