Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.

All tastes are expressions of belief.

The novel leads you places that you never could have gotten to otherwise.

I know to argue against our online lives seems like the argument of the grumpy, old Luddite novelist, but I really always try to make the argument from the perspective of personal pleasure.

For me, [deep structures] might be something very simply to do with the split in my family. That's why I'm always thinking about opposites. It's so childish, really, but that might be simply what it is.

For example, you have these grotesque, hilarious, profane ghosts in the book [Lincoln in the Bardo]. Even the concept of talking ghosts is, from an aesthetic point of view, grotesque. But you seem compelled by that risk in order to get to the other end of the equation.

When people use that stream of consciousness, it's kind of just a term they use for anything that looks slightly different on the page.