To really be centered and to really work well and to think about the kinds of things that I need to think about, I need to spend large amounts of time alone.

I believe, in a funny way, the job of the novelist is to be out there on the fringes and speaking for an experience that has not really been spoken for.

The novel is about five students of classics who are studying with a classics professor, and they take the ideas of the things that they're learning from him a bit too seriously, with terrible consequences.

But romantic vision can also lead one away from certain very hard, ugly truths about life that are important to know.

Everything takes me longer than I expect. It's the sad truth about life.