In short, I'm pretty suspicious of the idea that there's a real and true and authentic world, and then a bunch of false ones.

As to the "traditional filler of twenty-first century realist fiction," maybe that is something I avoid. I don't relate to standard psychologizing in novels. I don't really believe that the backstory is the story you need. And I don't believe it's more like life to get it - the buildup of "character" through psychological and family history, the whole idea of "knowing what the character wants." People in real life so often do not know what they want. People trick themselves, lie to themselves, fool themselves. It's called survival, and self-mythology.

Writing a first novel was an arduous crash course. I learned so much in the six years it took me to write it, mostly technical things pertaining to craft.

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.

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

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

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