On her inspiration:

“What does it mean to be a woman, a singer, who can’t talk, can’t sing? My great-grandma Ada lost her voice after her first child died. I wanted to make a character who can’t speak. How is she going to tell her story?”

On conning people:

“I grew up in a very lively and often drunk household full of fantastic storytellers. No one ever allowed the truth to get in the way of a good story. So I feel a great affinity to these mediums because I too am a con artist.”

“I hired another medium to get in touch with Charlotte Brontë for me. I wanted a Brontë blurb for this book, as Jane Eyre meant a lot to me when I was starting to write. The medium helped me get a blurb from Charlotte. Ms. Brontë is not as articulate as when she was living, but I’m still pleased about it.”

On inventing a religion:

“With Mr. Splitfoot I wanted to make my own religion to better understand how this happens. So I collected the things I love best: outer space, geology, mountains, sex, and vinyl records. I threw them all into one big heap and came up with the Etherists.”

On writing:

“I love to revise. In revision comes the fun part of making conscious the unconscious patterns that were there underneath.”

“I love books with secrets. I wanted to try my hand at a mystery, and to me that meant real tight plotting, suspense, thrills.”

“I learned to write by hanging out with poets, and I’ve never abandoned the idea that every word should be handled and adored.”

On One Direction:

“I’m crazy about them, really crazy about them, and I was perplexed by my love because, again and again, people would tell me I couldn’t or shouldn’t be crazy about 1D, that they are not the band for me, a woman in her 40s. This made me so angry. Nothing gets my dander up more than when the world acts like the things girls love are frivolous.”

On identity:

“I teach at Pratt Institute, a magical school filled with fantastic students, but as is true at any college, there’s a whole lot of identity politics. “Did we invite any Lithuanian butch Communists to come talk?” While I love to hear from everyone, while there’s no one I’m not curious about, identity politics quickly start to feel like we are rooting for the home team only. I tire of that. So I made Sheresa a ghost activist. She’s looking out for dead people, a huge but extremely silent majority. She’s making sure dead people get invited to speak at semiotics conferences. She might be the only ghost activist there is. I mean except for me.”

Read the complete interview here.