Boys are just boys after all, but sometimes girls really seem to be the turn of a pale wrist, or the sudden jut of a hip, or a clutch of very dark hair falling across a freckled forehead. I'm not saying that's what they really are. I'm just saying sometimes it seems that way, and that those details (a thigh mole, a full face flush, a scar the precise shape and size of a cashew nut) are so many hooks waiting to land you.

Sometimes I think my whole professional life has been based on this hunch I had, early on, that many people feel just as muddled as I do, and might be happy to tag along with me on this search for clarity, for precision. I love that aspect of writing. Nothing makes me happier than to hear a reader say: that’s just what I’ve always felt, but you said it clearly.

There's a perception that novels can't usually allow for your kind of absolute attention to detail.

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

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

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

Art is the Western myth, with which we both console ourselves and make ourselves.