American writer and teacher, Man Booker Prize winner for Lincoln in the Bardo, renowned for combining dark humor with profound compassion.
Satire is one of the ways of Buddhism. When you mock human vanity, you point people toward their suffering. This is not cruelty; this is love.
Death is not the end of the story; it is another kind of conversation. In Lincoln's afterlife, people continue to argue, love, suffer. Death is just another room.
When you write, you must love your characters—even those you criticize. Compassion is not sentimentality; it is the sharpness of vision.
We believe we are special, that we need more than others, that basic life rules don't apply to us. These three delusions are the root of all suffering.
Have a plan, but be ready to betray it. The story is wiser than you. If it pulls you elsewhere, let go of the wheel and follow it like a student.
I teach writers: deny your characters. The more you deny them, the more they suffer, the deeper their humanity. Suffering is the path to truth.
Drama is not in big events; it is in details. In the way someone ties a shoelace, in a pause before a word, in how light falls on a face. True literature is a microscope.