Pulchritude--beauty where you would least suspect it, hidden in a word that looked like it should signify a belch or a skin infection.

I like books that expose me to people unlike me and books that do battle against caricature or simplification. That, to me, is the heroic in fiction.

It seems to me now that the deep structures [in writing] are often subconscious and set in childhood.

The young people have a phrase for this now, which is "slay in your lane." That's a very important principle of writing. You have to work out what it is you can't do, obscure it, and focus on what works.

(and Catholics give out forgiveness at about the same rate as politicians give out promises and whores give out)

I'm a writer who never writes about sex. It's so far from my own fictional world.

The nineties, ecstatic decade!