How many snapshots in the world were actually just-after shots, the moment that elicited the shooter to press the button never captured; instead, the detritus just following, the laughter, the reaction, the ripples.

Part of being a writer is knowing when what you write is really bad.

Do you ever get the feeling like you already know the entire contents of the universe somewhere inside of your head, as if you were born with a complete map of this world already grafted onto the folds of your cerebellum and you are just spending your entire life figuring out how to access this map?

How many snapshots in the world were actually just-after shots, the moment that elicited the shooter to press the button never captured; instead, the detritus just following, the laughter, the reaction, the ripples.

I was only twelve, but through the slow, inevitable burn of a thousand sunrises and sunsets, a thousand maps traced and retraced, I had already absorbed the valuable precept that everything crumbled into itself eventually, and to cultivate a crankiness about this was just a waste of time.

Writing a novel is always complicated, it's not like you snap your fingers and go, 'Ah, I know what I'll write'. For me, a lot of the time, I have to write and as I write, I learn about the story.

I would not know what to say to you, except this: there was never a map that got it all right, and truth and beauty were never married to one another for long.