All tastes are expressions of belief.

Other people’s words are so important. And then without warning they stop being important, along with all those words of yours that their words prompted you to write. Much of the excitement of a new novel lies in the repudiation of the one written before. Other people’s words are the bridge you use to cross from where you were to wherever you’re going.

I often worry that my idea of personhood is nostalgic, irrational, inaccurate.

I like books that don't give you an easy ride. I like the feeling of discomfort. The sense of being implicated.

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

When I was 21 I wanted to write like Kafka. But, unfortunately for me, I wrote like a script editor for The Simpsons who'd briefly joined a religious cult and then discovered Foucault. Such is life.

Any artist who aligns themselves with a politician is making a category error because what politicians do is not on a human scale, it is on a geopolitical scale.