O you signals spinning round the
world with our secrets in tow,
what lies below, what pleasures
go, what torn bits show?

You know the “poetry noise” people make—it’s like, “Oh” [released breath]. I feel like that’s the sound of the poem connecting; that’s the sound that these words have landed somewhere, and you’ve received them. That exchange, or possibility of exchange, between a poet and poem or a reader and listener—I think that’s what grace is made of sometimes. 

I think part of what I liked about math was simply that it seemed like a sure thing, as sure as a thing could be, a solid mass of true and rigorous and irreproachable knowledge that I could grab like a pole on a bus.

I think with novel writing or narrative book writing in general, you have to have a journeyman approach. You cannot expect to be inspired through three hundred pages of prose. My attitude is just to go to work in the morning, clock in, and sit down there, because often it’s when you’re not inspired and you make yourself sit there that something happens you didn’t think was going to happen.