Life’s not a video game, Felix- there aren’t a certain number of points that send you to the next level. There isn’t actually any next level. The bad news is that everybody dies at the end. Game Over.

What interests me in [Lincoln in the Bardo] is a slight perverse balance between the sublime and the grotesque. Like you could have landed only on the sublime. But my argument is that the sublime couldn't exist without this other half.

Writing is my way of expressing - and thereby eliminating - all the various ways we can be wrong-headed.

To me, these kind of everyday miseries act as a fatal disqualifier. My sunniest beliefs are basically contingent on the fact that my child is not dying of cancer right now.

I wrote 'White Teeth' in the late nineties. I didn't really feel trepidatious about it. It was a different time.

Then he gave her a kiss on the forehead that felt like a baptism and she wept like a baby.

Most of the cruelty in the world is just misplaced energy.