I actually didn't listen to the Beatles song 'Nowhere Man' when I was writing my book of the same name. What I listened to a lot was 'Abbey Road.' Its disjointedness and its readiness to confuse only to delight were inspiring to me.

Memoir implies the need to reveal something about yourself - to recount your life for educational purposes.

You devise ways to tell a story that complies with your sensibility. Style and method are really extensions of your present sensibility.

I hate traveling and being away from my family. But I like meeting my readers, as what I write is actualized in them. Those encounters are exhilarating to me.

Politics is about ethics and morality, openly or not openly.

There's no connection between consumption of art and moral stamina at all.

It's difficult for me to understand how it was possible to live under the Bush regime for eight years and then just roll over and do other things.