I think a lot of the work I've done and a lot of the work I'm going to do in the future still ties to 9/11 and the fallout from it.

Nothing is over until there's something more decisive than your own thoughts.

The travel ban that was imposed by the [Donald Trump] administration is a very direct reverberation of 9/11.

Buzzing at the Sill is from a Theodore Roethke poem called "In a Dark Time." I'd heard a small part of it in a play, a sort of sci-fi play about morality in a virtual reality universe. Nothing to do with the book precisely, but it was a great play.

I went out to cover the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan fundamentally [in Buzzing at the Sill] because I was interested in war as a notion and in experiencing it. I was interested in history and how societies form. I was interested in the recent history of what had provoked these wars. So when I finally got out there, I was really seeing the wars through the American perspective, much more than through being embedded with American soldiers and Marines.

[Buzzing at the Sill] deals with the margins of America, a lot of parts unseen. Well, parts that are seen and familiar to a lot of the populace, but unseen when it comes to the parameters of what mainstream news and popular culture and Hollywood reflects.

I think a lot of the work I've done and a lot of the work I'm going to do in the future still ties to 9/11 and the fallout from it.