“…it took me months to complete this playlist, as I tried to make a satisfying listen that also told the story of Providence (of sadness, sex, and despair).”
“I always have to have music as I write, but it has to be a particular kind of soundtrack, one that I love, that energizes or moves me, and one that I know my characters would love as well.”
“The stories in this collection came together in the space of over a decade—during which I had lived on three continents and my music tastes had changed somewhat…”
“And Yet is a book about shyness and selfhood and sex and stability and identity and selfhood. It’s also a book about unoriginality, as the nameless protagonist mostly exists in books and magazines and albums.”
“My debut poetry collection, PlayHouse: Poems, positions music as a dwelling that people, from Billie Holiday to members of my family, can inhabit and shape.”
“No literary homage to Kpop would be complete without the OG of Kpop songs, and ‘Gangnam Style’ will forever occupy that seat with swagger, style, and an irrepressible beat.”
“Because I don’t listen to music when I write, it’s hard to think of a playlist of songs that might make sense with this book. Instead I offer an assortment of sound pieces that seem to me to be thinking about spaces and their noises the way I was sometimes thinking about the spaces in/of this book . . .”
“When I’m working on a novel, the rhythm of the sentences are essential to me. It’s not about music for music’s sake, but rather a way of tapping into the movement of a particular mind, a particular way of being.”
“The Best That You Can Do is my love letter to Generation X— to those of us who grew up with latchkeys and had to make do till our parents and guardians came home…”
“I’ve written a book about teeth. My teeth. Their decline and fall and costly rebirth.”