Trust in the fictive process, in the occult interweaving of text and event must be unwavering and absolute. This is the magic place, the mad place at the spark gap between word and world.

How is your father?” she asks disinterestedly.
“A contrivance,” I mutter. “A plot device.

If Realism called it like it saw it, Metafiction simply called it as it saw itself seeing itself see it.

Every life is inexplicable, I kept telling myself. No matter how many facts are told, no matter how many details are given, the essential thing resists telling. To say that so and so was born here and went there, that he did this and did that, that he married this woman and had these children, that he lived, that he died, that he left behind these books or this battle or that bridge – none of that tells us very much.

Writing is a very focused form of meditation. Just as good as sitting in a lotus position.

For me, there is very little difference between magic and art. To me, the ultimate act of magic is to create something from nothing: It's like when the stage magician pulls the rabbit from the hat.