I try to write about how we live today, how we use language, technology, our bodies.

Your memories from your early childhood seem to have such purchase on your emotions. They are so concrete.

Occupy Wall Street means making Wall Street and the corporate power elite understand that the people affected by the binge of unregulated greed are not going away, and they are not going to give up.

All roads lead to Wall Street, but we feel the effects of Wall Street on every street corner. Certainly in Syracuse, N.Y., where I live.

The issue isn't, Am I good enough? No. The issue is, Do I not have any other choice? Will and desire don't matter. Ability doesn't matter. Need is the only thing that matters.

The novel is about, for me, sustained and organized looking. I do think that people have a hunger for a sustained engagement, that concentration that the book can offer.

I am always trying to do something new and different. The first step is curiosity, questions. You pay attention to what fascinates you. If you can't shake it, there is something there.

In order to be a living, breathing thing, a novel has to be failed in some kind of way. Or at least that's how I keep writing them.

I have to say that movies have as much impact on me as music. And that I learned as much about narrative from movies as I did from reading novels, how to arrange stories, how to juxtapose things.

A good novel should be deeply unsettling - its satisfactions should come from its authenticity and its formal coherence. We must feel something crucial is at stake.

Yes, I did try acting when I was in high school and I was terrible at it. So I definitely have had the experience of being bad at artistic endeavor.

Just the idea of seeing a type of narrative we've not seen before is a chance to be surprised.

Belief in oneself and knowing who you are, I mean, that's the foundation for everything great.

Be fond of hearing rather than of talking.

The best villains are the nicest guys in person.

The world needs Christians who don't tolerate the complacency of their own lives.

Where you succeed will never matter so much as where you fail.

I have so many things that I say to my kids, I just drive them crazy.

Virtue is the truest nobility.

Clay Cook is a first class musician. Tender tormented genius here in 'North Star'. I will kill him if he leaves my band and he knows it. Great record.