I didn't do a masters in creative writing until I was 26, which is quite old, and then I found myself in New York and I needed money, so I started working full time as an editor.

Making art was really about the problem of the soul, of losing it. It was a technique for inhabiting the world. For not dissolving into it.

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

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.

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

Lovers offered only what they offered and nothing more, and what they offered came with provisos: believe what you want and don't look carefully at what isn't acceptable to you.

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