It's really a misconception to identify the writer with the main character, given that the author creates all the characters in the book. In certain ways, I'm every character.

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

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.

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

I guess I still feel that way and yet I'm slightly hesitant to insist on that idea, that it "better be fun for the writer." Or rather, that if it is, then the pleasure is a sign that it's good. Maybe I feel I've read that somewhere, other writers saying it, and I just think there is possibly no formula, and I don't like to read an interview with a writer where they just lay out the doxa of what quality is. It can seem brittle to do that.

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 was very precocious when I was young. I went to college at 16, and I graduated at 20. I wanted to be a writer, but I was more interested in experience than in applying myself intellectually.