A self needed to spill out sometimes, a body should show evidence of what the hell went on inside it..

Fiction is too complicated and too elusive to break down into a set of tricks..

When I started writing at 18 or 19, I had a fear of anything autobiographical, but I've come to realise that my writing is very autobiographical at t….

I'm an enormous fan of Thomas Bernhard's books, and I like the relentless feeling in his work - the pursuit of darkness, the negative - and I think i….

I work, and then I leave the office, and I'm with my kids and just sort of enjoy them on a visceral level, and I don't feel like I'm exorcising my ow….

With students, one is often in the position where you have to be authoritative about what they're doing and connected to some principle. I prefer not….

I always, at least back then, struggled with emotion in writing. I felt like I could do odd, unusual things, but there wouldn't be enough feeling in ….

My first book, 'The Age of Wire and String,' came out in 1995, and it was hardly reviewed at all..

A misspelled word is probably an alias for some desperate call for aid, which is bound to fail..

To me one of the amazing technologies of writing is the way it can listen in on thoughts. I don't feel that that's natural to other art forms in the ….

Machineries of reason, machineries of conduct, machineries of virtue. The machine that regulates instinct, keeps one’s hands free of another man’s th….

It's lonely to listen to the pleasure of others, not that I've made a habit of that kind of eavesdropping. There's joy and passion in the next room, ….

Judaism to me, as badly as I practiced it, what I've always loved about it was its total embrace of complexity, its admission of unknowability..

Slamming the book shut produces a wind on the face, a weather that is copyrighted by the author, and this wind may not be deployed without permission….

Suspense left my life a long time ago, now it has returned. I do not care for it..

Spelling is a way to make words safe, at least for now, until another technology appears to soften attacks launched from the mouth..

Among other things, autoimmune disorders are an induction into a world of unstable information and no reliable expertise..

People are considered as areas that resist light, mistakes in the air, collision sweet spots. At the time of this writing, the whole world is a crime….

It amazes me that parents are allowed to raise kids. There's so much power and often very little accountability..

Teaching is all armchair. I learn about writing by writing and thinking about what I've written and throwing it away..

Without sound, celebration and grief look nearly the same..