When I finish a book, I get extremely restless; I have to aggressively find ways to occupy myself; going off into the woods alone, doing things that are physically or mentally demanding to keep myself busy until the next big idea comes.

When I finish a book, I get extremely restless; I have to aggressively find ways to occupy myself; going off into the woods alone, doing things that are physically or mentally demanding to keep myself busy until the next big idea comes.

When novels deal in abstractions, they generally go off the rails.

Each time a high-wage job is lost, a family is turned upside down. And that affects the communities where they live.

We moved to Baltimore, Maryland, in 1979, when I was five. The funny thing is that, even though Baltimore had one of the top murder rates in the country in those days, I grew up hearing about how dangerous New York was.

My first published novel, American Rust, took three and a half years of full-time work to write. But I wrote two apprentice novels before that.

Nothing prepares you for making art except making art. You have to do it to get better.