“My goal has been to twine ideas and images into big subversive pretzels of life, death and goofiness on the chance they might help keep the world lively and give it the flexibility to endure.”
“What I wanted to do in this world was to surprise, entertain and enlighten myself and others, by telling stories that had never been told, in a style that defied categorization.”
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“First, I think I was interested in the stories, and later on, I became more interested in the language itself, so the stories became almost secondary, but it was kind of a background music for my life.
“I had a stick, and I used to go out in the backyard and fantasize, often aloud, and I would tell these stories. I would beat the ground with the stick.
“And then even today when I get excited about an idea when I’m writing, I often will pace the room, and I’ll slap my legs. I’ve always been too ashamed to talk about this bizarre behavior, but I was telling my paramour about it and she said, ‘Well, you were drumming,’ and that hadn’t occurred to me before. That’s exactly what I was doing, was drumming out the story, setting up a rhythm behind the story.”
“There’s not a word in one of my books that hasn’t been gone over 25, 30, 35, 40 times. I read every sentence over and over again and rework it, not particularly looking for a more shining truth, but looking for the right rhythm.”