As a writer, I can live somewhat independently, occupying nooks and crannies and finding meaning there. I can even live in my mind a good portion of most days.

I have a second-degree black belt in Okinawan kobudo weapons training.

Writing is so wrapped up in ego, but with math one is just trying to get it right, although you're often wrong. I think math helped me become a good critic of myself, come at writing a little less personally.

I didn't actually figure out how to get guidance, so I just decided to go to school at University of Southern California because they sent me a glossy brochure.

A Life in Men is a joyful, ambitious novel that is also an adventure traversing three continents, as well as a meditation on love, sex, and, most important, friendship, which can overcome time, distance, and even death.

I'm not much interested in my own self when I write. I'm interested in what I observe out there, what's going on around me.

I've worked behind counters serving food, and I've lived on the circus train, and I've led bicycle tours in Eastern Europe and the Balkans and Russia. I've been a key liner for a newspaper, I've done typesetting. Oh, all sorts of things.