I know to argue against our online lives seems like the argument of the grumpy, old Luddite novelist, but I really always try to make the argument from the perspective of personal pleasure.

150 years ago in [Charles] Dickens's time there was at least a sense of craft. So some of the things people had inside of them, they had the possibility of expressing in the making of things - even in a daily way with their clothes or their food. People made a good deal of both themselves. Now our daily lives are almost all consumption. Craft plays a tiny role.

The last page of [Lincoln in the Bardo] - without giving too much away - involves somebody entering somebody else. Not in a sexual way. But it says one of the simplest things you could ever say, which is that we must try and be inside each other. We must have some kind of feeling for each other and enter into each other's experience.

And it's just anathema to being a writer. It's not healthy. But in another way, when I'm writing, what it's about for me is being good on the page. None of that noise could change the way I feel about my writing. Which is not always particularly positive.

You are never stronger...than when you land on the other side of despair.

Revelation is where all crazy people end up. It's the last stop on the nutso express.

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.