I Was An Infinitely Hot And Dense

People Really Want To Believe That There Is No Fiction. I Think They Find It Much Easier To Imagine That Novelists Are Writing Memoirs, Writing About Their Lives, Because It's Difficult To Conceive That There's A Great Imaginary Life In Which You Can Participate.

Actually What's Worse Than A Dog's Mouth Is A Cat's Mouth. They're Not Dirtier Per Se, But They Have Sharper Teeth, So They Are Much More Likely To Go Deep, Should They Bite You.

I Think Of Memory As A Game, That Is As Something One Engages In With A Very Profound Kind Of "playfulness."

I Have An Enduring, Very Robust Infatuation With Dictators. I Have An Infatuation With Stalin, Mao, And Mussolini. In The Paris Review Interview I Did (in 2013), I Said My Next Book, This One, Was Going To Be About Mussolini. I Wound Up Only Having A Mussolini Cameo In The Book.

“et Tu, Babe” Was Born Out Of My Absolute Certainty That A Writer’s Life Was Solitary And Insular, And I Was Happy With That. I Love Reading And Writing, It’s My Whole Life.