"The real influence on a book is the emotional and intellectual engagement you have with the ideas that are in it. The way other writers exert influence is more about learning skills, like learning how to correctly julienne a pepper or dice an onion. Just having good knife skills doesn’t make you a chef."

“But influence is a funny thing. I sometimes feel I’m more influenced by the things that have happened to me, than by anything I’ve read. When I’m reading, I feel I am teaching myself about the tools I want to use, which I feel is a separate thing from what will influence this or that book.”

“I like it! I tend to write about whatever feels vulnerable or messy in my life at that moment, even if that means writing a plot that has nothing to do with anything I’ve ever done or lived. The feelings in a story or novel have to be native to my life”

“You asked if being with someone helps or hurts, or what effect it has on the work. I think it just depends on who that person is and who you are relative to them. In relationships, we consent to be manipulated by the other in positive and negative ways, all of which inevitably goes into the work”