If I'm reading a book and it seems truly interesting, I tend to start reading back to front in order not to be too deeply under the sway of progress..

Resolution and conclusion are inherent in a plot-driven narrative..

I'm wonderfully self-lacerating, probably to my character's detriment. I'm terribly open to critique..

Our culture is obsessed with real events because we experience hardly any..

To me, the moment you're talking about nonfiction you're talking about reality..

Copies have been dethroned; the economic model built on them is collapsing. In a regime of superabundant free copies, copies are no longer the basis ….

Nonfiction, qua label, is nothing more or less than a very flexible (easily breakable) frame that allows you to pull the thing away from narrative an….

With relatively few exceptions, the novel sacrifices too much, for me, on the altar of plot..

The beauty of reality-based art - art underwritten by reality hunger - is that it's perfectly situated between life itself and (unattainable) "life a….

The absence of plot leaves the reader room to think about other things..

I'm not interested in collage as the refuge of the composition-ally disabled. I'm interested in collage as (to be honest) an evolution beyond narrati….

Anything processed by memory is fiction..

Thomas Jefferson went through the New Testament and removed all the miracles, leaving only the teachings. Take a source, extract what appeals to you,….

I don’t know what’s the matter with me, why I’m so adept at distance, why I feel so remote from things, why life feels like a rumor..

Genre is a minimum security prison..

Story seems to say that everything happens for a reason and I want to say, No, it doesn’t..

Momentum, in literary mosaic, derives not from narrative but from the subtle, progressive buildup of thematic resonances..

A book should either allow us to escape existence or teach us how to endure it..

In my own little way, I feel like I'm part of a group of writers who care deeply about pushing the essay forward..

I take literature as a really serious human activity. It's not just a playful thing. It can be hilarious and wonderful and performative, but I think ….

My medium is prose, not the novel..