He traced the genealogy of the feeling.

Asking why rappers always talk about their stuff is like asking why Milton is forever listing the attributes of heavenly armies. Because boasting is a formal condition of the epic form. And those taught that they deserve nothing rightly enjoy it when they succeed in terms the culture understands.

For me, George Saunders novel [Lincoln in the Bardo] is about a problem of pain.

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

In the end, your past is not my past and your truth is not my truth and your solution - is not my solution.

It’s such a confidence trick, writing a novel. The main person you have to trick into confidence is yourself. This is hard to do alone.

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