People who are harder to love pose a challenge, and the challenge makes them easier to love. You're driven to love them. People who want their love easy don't really want love.

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.

I had been thinking about rubber all along. Like as the novel's element, or base material. A lot of artists in the late '60s and early '70s worked with rubber and other forms that seemed like they connoted industrial detritus. Robert Morris, Eva Hesse.

I have spent a lot of time in the art world, and I guess I do listen to how people speak. I'm interested in what they say and how they say it.

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 desire for love is universal but that has never meant it’s worthy of respect. It’s not admirable to want love, it just is.

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