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" I have spent a lot of time in the art world, and I guess I do listen to how people speak. I'm interested in what they say and how they say it. "

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" A historical event represents the best and the worst of that moment. "

" I guess I'm not really fond of just chit-chatting. I want to learn something and have an experience. "

" I am occasionally enraptured by Western landscape. But I don't identify that state of mind as having to do with my own origins, having grown up in the West, although I certainly crisscrossed Nevada countless times growing up, and then as a young adult, in cars and on motorcycles. "

" Writing does produce a very unique satisfaction. There are times when I'm writing that it's frustrating or appalling or difficult, but when it goes well, it goes really well, and there is a feeling of rightness, like I'm doing the thing I was meant to do, almost in a mystical way, like I'm at an appropriate angle to the world. "

" At home, I dedicate occasional whole days to reading as if I'm a convalescent. The ideal place for this is the bath, where the body floats free. Books go a little wavy, but they're mine, so who cares. "

" I have crashed on a motorcycle that was going at 140mph, so I know what it feels like. "

" One of the strategies for doing first-person is to make the narrator very knowing, so that the reader is with somebody who has a take on everything they observe. "

" I begin a book with imagery, more than I do with an idea or a character. Some kind of poetic image. "

" When I see things in the world that leap out at me, I want to make use of them in fiction. Maybe every writer does that. It just depends on what you claim or appropriate as yours. "

" I try to show ugliness, but with compassion for the people who commit ugly acts. "

" I spent a huge amount of time by myself. I daydreamed and learned how to be alone and not be lonely. "

" Art is about play and about transcendent meanings, not reducible to politics. "

" It's through engagement with the world, and not separation from it, that something with meaning gets produced. "

" Art is something special because it can come up with a way of approaching the truth that is a little to the side. "

" I know a little bit about motorcycles and motorcycle riding. "

" A lot of politics in art is just institutional critique, which, in my opinion, is not all that political. "

" Flamethrowers have been used by many armies in many wars, including by American Marines in Korea and Vietnam. They cause horrific deaths and are thus a serious public-relations liability. The U.S. military apparently phased them out in 1978. "

" I shy away from plot structure that depends on the characters behaving in ways that are going to eventually be explained by their childhood, or by some recent trauma or event. People are incredibly complicated. Who knows why they are the way they are? "

" I get the feeling that people from outside the world of contemporary art see it as deserving of mockery, in an emperor's-new-clothes sort of way. I think that's not right and that it's just because they don't understand the discourse. "

" From 'Midnight Cowboy' to 'Taxi Driver' is a brief era whose grit, beauty, and violence has been quite mythologized. "

" I spent ten years riding motorcycles. "

" The 1970s seemed particularly playful. People were trying to make work that couldn't be sold. "

" When one is the type of writer who cares about the meaning of the historically specific setting, the history itself is not something that I would call backdrop. It's not window dressing for a timeless relationship about love and betrayal. For me, the setting and the specific history are active co-agents with me in trying to form the novel. "

" Danzon is my favorite Cuban music, played by a traditional string orchestra with flute and piano. It's very formally structured but romantic music, which derives from the French-Haitian contradance. "