I like a great degree of compression. I like to mix lateral steps with forward ones. I don't want the prose ever to feel simply functional - at least not for any stretch.

Toronto is hard to capture in a few strokes.

Paranoia can be a sign of a sanity in some circumstances, in some places and times.

Absurdity isn't quite so absurd as it once was.

I just write what I want to read, and sometimes keeping it interesting means adding one more element that ends up adding another year to the work.

I love poetry, read it a lot, but make no claim to being able to write it.

The idea that language can be recombined to create new forms, new things, is of course very old in poetry.

We're getting used to reality and fantasy passing into each other. Much of the border between them has been erased.

It's fiction's job to express how it feels to be living now, and it's a complex feeling, full of contradiction. To me it often feels like a brutal trivialization of reality.

I seem always to have two or three novels going at once. It takes me a long time to finish one.

We want to know that we're not alone with our loneliness or loss.

Look for the trust instead of miracles

I went to art school, I think it helped me a great deal because it taught me who I am.

How true is it that humanity refuses compromise during prosperity, and reaches out for arbitration when weak.

God was treated like this powerful, erratic, rather punitive father who has to be pacified and praised. You know, flattered.

This was another of our fears: that Life wouldn't turn out to be like Literature.

Character is formed, not by laws, commands, and decrees, but by quiet influence, unconscious suggestion and personal guidance.

We must focus on people as people, regardless of race, creed, color or gender.

When the belly is empty, the body becomes spirit; and when it is full, the spirit becomes body.

I have always liked knives. Then somebody gave me one. Then somebody gave me another one. Then I liked having them and started buying them. I started finding ones I liked, ones with funky blades.

Hypocrisy is the audacity to preach integrity from a den of corruption.