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"He could do the dextral pain the same way: Abiding. Here was a second right here: he endured it. What was undealable-with was the thought of all the instants all lined up and stretching ahead, glittering. And the projected future fear. ... It's too much to think about. To Abide there. But none of it's as of now real. ... He could just hunker down in the space between each heartbeat and make each heartbeat a wall and live in there. Not let his head look over. What's unendurable is what his own head could make of it all. ... But he could choose not to listen."
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"It can become an exercise in trying to get the reader to like and admire you instead of an exercise in creative art."
Art

"I think TV promulgates the idea that good art is just art which makes people like and depend on the vehicle that brings them the art."
Art

"I just think that fiction that isn't exploring what it means to be human today isn't art."
Art

"For these cultures, getting rid of the pain without addressing the deeper cause would be like shutting off a fire alarm while the fire's still going."
Cause

"One of the things that makes Wittgenstein a real artist to me is that he realized that no conclusion could be more horrible than solipsism."
Philosophy

"We're not keen on the idea of the story sharing its valence with the reader. But the reader's own life "outside" the story changes the story."
Life

"I often think I can see it in myself and in other young writers, this desperate desire to please coupled with a kind of hostility to the reader."
Desire

"Pleasure becomes a value, a teleological end in itself. It's probably more Western than U.S. per se."
Society

"We're kind of wishing some parents would come back. And of course we're uneasy about the fact that we wish they'd come back - I mean, what's wrong with us?"
Fact
