Writing is a way of living. It doesn't quite matter that there are too many books for the number of readers in the world to read them. It's a way of being alive, for the writer.

My natural orientation has never been among a community of writers, really. For some reason my social world has always been in the art world.

The VW doesn’t make you think of Hitler and genocide. It’s a breast on wheels, a puffy little dream.

I don't really have those kinds of intentions when I write a scene. I try to follow the internal logic of the fiction, rather than make an argument or an assertion.

I begin a book with imagery, more than I do with an idea or a character. Some kind of poetic image.

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.

I was doing that thing the infatuated do, stitching destiny onto the person we want stitched to us.