I grew up in Mississippi being told it was a great place, but not feeling that. When I finally began reading seriously, literature showed me something about where I was from which was worthwhile.

The past is the prism through which we see a great, great, great deal of ourselves; it's a useful prism. It doesn't mean that we're fascinated by the dead or that we're fascinated by things that are settled. It is just one place where we can go to understand ourselves in the present.

The ways in which things are superficially similar but also distinct is interesting to me.

The thing about being a writer is that you never have to ask, 'Am I doing something that's worthwhile?' Because even if you fail at it, you know that it's worth doing.

We're all hoping that Trump doesn't get our world on his terms because there won't be anything of it left. Trump is a true psychopath, a psychopath in the way that tragedy becomes tragedy.

In order to write novels for a living - it's not pathological, but I do think and worry and brood and fidget about stuff that I'm working on.

With imagination, you can put something where nothing was.