I did it because that’s what it was going to take. I really wanted it. I had an older brother, and he was bigger and smarter, and when you’re a kid, you’re trying to catch up all the time. I think that that’s where it kind of came from, just that little brother syndrome. I was just trying to be something, trying to make myself worth something. It was proving it to other people and proving it to myself at the same time. I needed that.

I’m a binge writer.…I'm not an everyday writer.

to isolate and to force myself to write

It’s best to start writing when you wake up in the morning, or afternoon, or whenever it is you wake up. Just start then, because you are closer to the dream state than at any other time in the day, which means the imagination is really working on all cylinders, and it means that whatever it is that manufactures sentences in your head is very fresh, and you have all kinds of slants on things that by the end of the day you won’t have, or you will just lose along the way. Further advice I have not.

It’s a gift to let yourself be changed by a person, and for a person to allow you to change them.

I love being bad at something and getting better at it.

You have kids and you’re forced to remember that time actually extends. The world extends, policy extends, stakes extend past your own life.

I actually did write a novel. I worked on it for five years, and then I shelved it because it was bad.

I act like a hopeful person, but I think that hope is based on having zero expectations.

I feel some sort of chemistry with the subject.…The bar for me is when it’s interesting enough that I would talk about it on my own time.