Reading 'Moby-Dick' was really a sort of transformative literary experience for me.

I've earned my living in all sorts of terrible ways - as a janitor, a copy editor, a psychotherapist.

You know, it's sort of common wisdom among New York publishers that short story collections don't make money.

Fiction and nonfiction, for me, involve very different processes.

The novel has always been the form that incorporates other forms. For me, it has always been the ultimate medium.

When I write for 'n+1,' I begin by doing a lot of reading, to try to convince myself I'm not stupid. Then I scribble down a paragraph here, a paragraph there, when a notion strikes. Then I see if I can arrange those notions in a way that yields an argument.