The idea that motherhood is inherently somehow a threat to creativity is just absurd.

[George Saunders] is very precise about what he is doing. There isn't a thing left to chance.

When I write I am trying to express my way of being in the world. This is primarily a process of elimination: once you have removed all the dead language, the second-hand dogma, the truths that are not your own but other people's, the mottos, the slogans, the out-and-out lies of your nation, the myths of your historical moment - once you have removed all that warps experience into a shape you do not recognise and do not believe in - what you are left with is something approximating the truth of your own conception.

I do my best work under pressure, so I’ll nick an artery, and my husband isn’t allowed to stanch the bleeding till I’ve banged out a chapter.

The belief that consciousness extends beyond death is surely to put more belief in the permanence of self, not less. That seems to me a comfort that you're allowing yourself.

It's a funny thing about rap, that when you say 'I' into the microphone, it's like a public confession. It's very strange.

He traced the genealogy of the feeling.