I'll say this, and it'll sound like bullshit, but it's not: I don't really pay attention to this stuff [Man Booker Prize] very much. I think part of it is I can see myself wondering who's doing what and getting jealous, and none of that's healthy for me. So I just don't really.

I talk about folding it in often with Althea, my girlfriend. She's getting her doctoral degree at Berkeley and she talks about how even when writing these very academic, and, for the most part, serious papers there's just so much going on in her head and heart, and it's a reminder that there's a reason that she's studying these things.

We don't act the same in every situation. Things bleed into all kinds of other things, from behavior to identity.

I co-taught a seminar called Small Group Processes with my professor. I learned so much from it, so much about myself, about groups, how this stuff works. I bring all that stuff to teaching now.

Even when it comes to writing fiction, how do you encompass all this stuff that's right on the tip of your tongue? You have to fold that into what you're working on.

I'm not searching for the truth.That's too much pressure .

It's just never the same. At least for me.It's probably because it's just who I am, I never know what that [truth] is. It's so momentary to go, "Oh, yeah, that's true." That's a fundamental starting point for me - to figure out what's true from moment to moment to moment.