He made me think of all the books I hadn't read, and all the ones I'd read but hadn't fully understood.

I did a lot of reading of the Bible and became fascinated with the idea of the Rapture. It's pretty wild. I hadn't heard of it until I was in college.

I find that even small changes sometimes jog you out of a mental rut.

There's not some finite amount of pain inside us. Our bodies and minds just keep manufacturing more of it.

When I was writing 'The Abstinence Teacher,' I really tried to immerse myself in contemporary American evangelical culture.

I was a garbage man in New Jersey in summers during college at Yale. Everybody else got to go to Switzerland and I got to go to the dump.

I know very few writers who outline fully before they start. It just doesn't seem possible to do, because so many things don't come out until you're absolutely knee-deep in the world.