Don't live in a way that makes you feel dead.

The idea that motherhood is inherently somehow a threat to creativity is just absurd.

Oh, I know that. You know me, baby, I cannot be broken. Takes a giant to snap me in half.

English writing tends to fall into two categories - the big, baggy epic novel or the fairly controlled, tidy novel. For a long time, I was a fan of the big, baggy novel, but there's definitely an advantage to having a little bit more control.

Don’t romanticise your ‘vocation’. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no ‘writer’s lifestyle’. All that matters is what you leave on the page.

The last page of [Lincoln in the Bardo] - without giving too much away - involves somebody entering somebody else. Not in a sexual way. But it says one of the simplest things you could ever say, which is that we must try and be inside each other. We must have some kind of feeling for each other and enter into each other's experience.

When I was young, I was very technical about these things. I didn't like to admit to any intimate relation with what I was writing.