People think about who they are in the stillest hour of the night.

To portray America over the past twenty years or so, I would think immediately of football, probably the Super Bowl in its sumptuous suggestion of a national death wish.

I think more than writers, the major influences on me have been European movies, jazz, and Abstract Expressionism.

I think my work is influenced by the fact that we're living in dangerous times. If I could put it in a sentence, in fact, my work is about just that: living in dangerous times.

I've come to think of Europe as a hardcover book, America as the paperback version.

There is a set of balances and rhythms to a novel that we can't experience in real life. So I think there is a sense in which fiction can rescue history from confusion.

He thinks he's happy but it's just a nerve cell in his brain that's getting too much stimulation or too little stimulation.

I think literature has lost it's power. Great novels continue to be written, but they are no longer changing the world.

I think that the massive, overarching, interconnected systems of technology tend to make us a little insecure, somewhat pliable, and susceptible to half-beliefs.