The oldest principle of composition: repeat everything.
The Midwest is such a tabula rasa.
Until I was 42, I could fit everything that I owned into two suitcases.
The use of music is to remind us how short a time we have a body.
I think that if the novel's task is to describe where we find ourselves and how we live now, the novelist must take a good, hard look at the most central facts of contemporary life - technology and science.
I would say the flip side to my fascination with systems is a fascination with components. So many of my books are dialogues between little and big.