Not all events are stories.

People make events into stories. Stories give events meaning.

I think about stories and their logic and wonder if there can be any such thing as simply "there is a book.

I think predictability is built into any good novel in some way - you begin reading Anna Karenina and you know pretty much what's going to happen at the end. But that doesn't mean you know what's going to happen in the middle. For me, it's that sense of what happens in the middle that's important.

But the ground shakes, as if something's trying to push up from below, and I think of other people's mothers shaking out their duvets or even God shaking out the fabric of space-time.

I'm a great believer in gathering together all your obsessions and seeing if you can make a novel out of them.