I'm interested in someone who's mired in grief: how do you get back to that thing that makes them warm? Because you know that's in there.

People seem very comfortable having a kind of Cheesecake Factory-type of life.

Whenever I went to an historical moment that was sad or where something terrible happened, it was, for me, a learning moment, a teaching moment for those who survived.

I usually feel something before I know it.

If you're just mired in privilege, there's nothing to learn; learning appears to be over.

Bruce Lee, before he fought, he would try to visualize how the fight would go, because he was visualizing a victorious path out of the combat.

Because I write intuitively and image-by-image and moment-by-moment, my writing has to be powered by feelings and emotions.

I can't stay engaged for years with a book unless it has feelings. It can't be an idea for me - it has to be a felt thing.

Much of the visualizing is imaginative.

People were always hungry, bullied, afraid, paranoid - so I just thought I'd show that in the novel in a kind of suffocating way.

Magical realism as a declaration in the text is usually when someone can't speak and then they must be magically reinvigorated in some way.

This is no occupation for an adult who can look other adults in the eye, carry his own weight, and count himself one of them.

Lucas took a tentative sip of his coffee. It tasted like an otter had pissed in a tea urn and it had been left to go stale over a prolonged period.

Writers leave a trail of magic everywhere they go.

If a literary man puts together two words about music one of them will be wrong.

Maybe the private life wasn't forever. Maybe everyone got it for a little while and then spent the rest of their lives remembering.

I hate to create cynicism about politicians. We just need to invade. Regular people need to run for office and keep their balls and ovaries intact.

The Gospel is not a picture of adoption, adoption is a picture of the Gospel.

And for him, who lived in a certain circle, and who required some mental activity such as usually develops with maturity, having views was as necessary as having a hat.

Don't settle for a relationship that won't let you be yourself.

I am the product of the masses of my country and the product of my enemy.