I've been a Brewers fan since birth.

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.

I feel like every time I start up, it's like a truck you have to get into 15th gear, so you very solely crank into that mental space where you feel really immersed in the world of the book and then you can just kind of go. But there's just that few days of frustration to get to that point.

In fact, there's a lot to legitimately hate about pro sports and the way they are conducted.

This was the dreamy, paradisiacal side of domestic ritual: when all the days were possessed of the same minutiae precisely because you wanted them to be.

It’s very hard right now to be a pro sports fan. The economics of this stuff is abysmal.

Most great books have been about striving in some sense. In a sense, money is the great topic of the novel. You couldn’t necessarily say that about poetry.

A lot of writers choose to live in New York, partly because of the literary culture here, and partly because Brooklyn’s a pretty nice place to live. And a lot of writers who might not geographically reside in New York still point their ambitions towards New York in some sense.

I sold a book six years after I left an MFA program. In between, there was a lot of endurance of poverty and a lot of fighting off doubt. It’s all a part of the process of being or becoming a writer.

It is no fun at all to have been writing a book for seven or so years, especially when you’ve never published anything before.