Angela Carter, Leonora Carrington, even nonsurrealists like Kafka and Nabokov - writers like these, who create paths between the firmly grounded and flights of fantasy, are my personal North Star.

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.

When we worship, we ascend, when we ascend we gain revelation from God.

The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion.

You can equate acting to a tennis game: When you're playing one of the best, you get better.

My mother went into the Peace Corps when she was sixty-eight.

You will never get any more out of this life than you expect.

Some were beggars, some were kings, and some were masters of the arts. But in their shame they're all the same, these men with broken hearts.

I was the youngest of five, and I think my mother always knew I was meant to be an actress.

He who conquers others is strong; He who conquers himself is mighty.

Ireland really is my problem; the breaking point of the huge suppuration which all British and all European society now is

All art is propaganda. It is universally and inescabably propaganda; sometimes unconsciously, but often deliberately, propaganda.