I gazed around the room and my eyes stopped dead on a little boy standing in the corner. This was a particularly eerie doll. Life-sized and blond-haired and blue-eyed. I saw a little Nazi boy, pockets probably stuffed with scissors and retractable blades. My grandfather on my mother's side was rumored to be half Jewish, which practically makes me Jerry Seinfeld's brother, and thus wary of blond German boys with their hands out of sight.

The Schnauzer listens to jazz. I listen to jazz because he likes it, and I have even gone to jazz concerts with him, but truthfully I would rather listen to retarded children pounding on pan lids with wooden spoons.

Smoking had become my favorite thing in the world to do. It was like having instant comfort, no matter where or when.

You would be amazed by what you can give up, lose, or break, and yet still be a person who gets happy over brownies.

I never question the way I write. Writing is the only thing that's without seams for me. It's an effort to talk because my pictures have to be turned into these sounds. It's an effort to be alive. It's work. But writing is wonderful.

We haven't slept together. But we've napped

I feel like they are two different things, and when I write books, they're just books. If they can be movies that's okay. But I would write a novel that couldn't be a film.