To be alive is to listen quietly while other people talk. That's how you learn something.

For me, truth cracks open in the places where things do not cohere. That's how life is.

I'm releasing myself from the responsibility of claiming to know when something is good and when it isn't.

There was lots of pleasure in writing The Flamethrowers. Then again, what is pleasure? Some pleasure is easy and other kinds are never quite felt, existing only as the residue of hard work, or more as satisfaction than thrill.

A funny thing about women and machines: the combination made men curious.

I'm not belittling the art world. Not at all. I take it quite seriously, actually. But the logic of art is a vanguard logic that pressures art to incorporate the quotient of risk.

When I see things in the world that leap out at me, I want to make use of them in fiction. Maybe every writer does that. It just depends on what you claim or appropriate as yours.