My mom is an artist and my own fiction is deeply visual.

I always try to be alert to the potential for repetition, for a decaying orbit with regard to my use of technique, etc.

Some questions will ruin you if you are denied the answer long enough.

When you think about the complexity of our natural world - plants using quantum mechanics for photosynthesis, for example - a smartphone begins to look like a pretty dumb object.

The map had been the first form of misdirection, for what is a map but a way of emphasizing some things and making other things invisible?

Nothing that lived and breathed was truly objective—even in a vacuum, even if all that possessed the brain was a self-immolating desire for the truth.

There's also a lot of gritty Americana type of bands. I actually have a lot of Britpop on my iPod, too.

I also am not particularly risk-averse - I don't mind jumping off a cliff if I trust the people who've told me they'll catch me at the bottom.

Imbuing fiction with a life that extends beyond the last word is in some ways the goal: the ending that goes beyond the ending in the reader's mind, so invested are they in the story.

So many differing opinions and philosophies... are rarely housed under the roof of a single magazine.

Literary influences are harder for me to point to, because mostly it's a mulch of all of my past reading.

Make your name and know your value

The gift of willingness is the only thing that stands between the quiet desperation of a disingenuous life and the actualization of unexpressed potential.

The longer I do my job the more I realize that humans lack good mirrors. It's so hard for anyone to show us how we look, and so hard for us to show anyone how we feel.

We should not write so that it is possible for the reader to understand us, but so that it is impossible for him to misunderstand us.

This is a very violent place to live, the Earth, and we're a very violent species. Cain is still killing Abel. We see that every day.

Heaven knows, it's not the way it could be.

My poetry is not lyric. The epigrams are lyric because they come from my youthful period of lyricism, but my other poetry is not lyric.

When I watch TV I can tell when someone is punching the joke and telling me when to laugh (I’ll decide when to laugh, thank you very much).

Happiness is liberty from everything that makes us unhappy.

The past can be changed by the future.