Surely there is something to be said for drawing a circle around our attention and remaining within that circle. But how large should this circle be?

You must live life with the full knowledge that your actions will remain. We are creatures of consequence.

Full stories are as rare as honesty.

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.

I'm very attracted to exile literature - particularly Nabokov - exactly because the idea of being away from home for any serious length of time is so inconceivable to me.

It made me feel that I had to work very hard, but I've always felt I had to work very hard to get my own approval.

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.