"Literature and spirituality are very close. It doesn't matter if there's erotica in the book, or if there is very vivid description, or if there's hatred in the book. I think God and the gods watch over the writer or poet who for the duration of the writing is kind of blessed, is in a spell - not in a happy spell and not in a sweet or calm one, but to stir up that part of the mind, to find knowledge and words and narrative that one did not know one had, is a mystery. And having been brought up very religiously, I ascribe that mystery to God. The Greeks ascribed it to 'the gods'. But whether it's singular or plural, it is an energy, a force outside oneself, that comes to cause this stuff."