Marriage is an an inherently contradictory state. It involves the fusion of two people into one thing. And it's also love, and it's a lot of work, and it's got glory in its drudgery.

Toronto may be the only city where novels are integral to high art, the alternative scene and mainstream culture all at the same time.

I'd never call myself a feminist, and that the world doesn't need male feminists.

One thing you can say about Trump is that he is not a traditional patriarch. He has a wife who's not even in the White House. And you could say the same of Duterte in the Philippines and of Putin. They're parodies of masculinity. They're hyper-masculine, but they're also totally unsure of their masculinity, and they parade it around.

Men are enforced into a kind of silence about their gender; they're supposed to not think of it as a performance. That's the definition of manliness - that it's not a performance; it's being yourself, authentic. Whereas women have understood gender as performance. Men have not yet made that quantum leap, or rather they're making it in many ways, they're not thinking about it.

Whenever I read a book about a marriage, I always feel I'm being lied to.

Men are losing power in their daily lives, but manliness is still iconic of power. This creates incredible turbulence around masculinity and incredible confusion around gender norms that's only going to accelerate.