Angela Carter's fiction blew me away and really instilled a passion for writing, bolstered by Vladimir Nabokov. But in general, I can't point to any one thing. I just always loved books and writing.

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.

Marriage is a partnership

Call it sentimentality. Call it curiosity. Just don't call it madness.

I had only been a citizen for two weeks when I received a summons to appear for jury duty!

REBEL, n. A proponent of a new misrule who has failed to establish it.

Most of the time I was in the background. I never played [the Virgin] Mary. I was always kind of the third angel.

At this point you are so far away from what you really are, it's ridiculous.

I could do a franchise for the end of everything. 'The End of Dogs,' 'The End of Cats.'

I just came in this morning with one goal; to make it back tonight, so I'm very excited for the final.

Guilt was the grease in which the wheels of the authority turned.

Everything bows to success, even grammar.