The kids I knew growing up who worked on bikes all loved the smell of gas. It is the liquid agent for speed.

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.

People are complicated. Personally I don't go in for puritanical people.

Eventually, I decided that if I was going to really write a novel, I couldn't do it in New York City while holding down a job. You need a constant money source to live in New York City unless you're independently wealthy, which I'm not.

I'm happy to be a woman but much of it was learned over the course of life. Really thudded into me. You learn it. It's a kind of mastery and artistry. The deeper person underneath the scent of Diptyque Philosykos or whatever is much less gendered. Every person has a range. In fiction, you get to be it all. I'm as much the men in my book as I am the women. I write how I write and there is no mission to stake a claim.

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.

I think any time you deal with humans and the way they exploit one another and cause pain you are in the realm of politics, on some level.