If I'm writing, I'll say something metaphorical or approximate, whereas scientists are very precise.

When you are writing literary writing, you are communicating something subtextual with emotions and poetry. The prose has to have a voice; it's not just typing. It takes a while to get that voice.

The ideal art, the noblest of art: working with the complexities of life, refusing to simplify, to "overcome" doubt.

It's not hard to write poorly. But to write something good, it has to be revised.

It isn't the subjects we write about but the seriousness and subtlety of our expression that determines the worth of or effort.

For the writer, the serial killer is, abstractly, an analogue of the imagination's caprices and amorality; the sense that, no matter the dictates and even the wishes of the conscious social self, the life or will or purpose of the imagination is incomprehensible, unpredictable.