Why do I have an issue with banks? They have their greedy fingers in everyones money. No other industry has the power to deduct a bill or fees directly from your own bank account without so much as a notice.

I'm the type of spiritual person that doesn't speak openly about their spirituality. Irony is probably my religion.

As a book person and a movie person, I feel Jewish. My Dad was more Buddhist than anything, and on the West Coast I've often had the impression that Jews become Buddhists. I think, if anything, my religion has more to do with California consciousness, vibrations and energy. My wife isn't Jewish. There's nothing ceremonial going on at our house, I mean, occasionally a candle gets lit. But, definitely, my Judaism is an ongoing relationship, one that remains to be consummated.

I found once you start writing about God it's really fun. It's like a rock singer saying "baby." "Baby, baby, baaayy-by." You start saying "God" on the page and you don't want to stop.

I think these large bureaucratic institutions are created in some way explicitly to inoculate anyone from actual responsibility, to create a much more diffuse and blameless kind of society.

I'm interested in the ongoing war between the individual and community. That inner dissent against whatever group is surrounding you. No one wants to cede their selfhood to a group, right? And yet no one can exactly live outside the group, either. Even the most obstinate survivalist probably lives in some telepathic communion with all the other obstinate survivalists out there in the woods.

We moved up to Oregon when I was eight, and I think the radical absence of Jewish life here might have strangely made me feel more Jewish. It's a contextual thing I guess.