She laughs and looks out the window and I think for a minute that she's going to start to cry. I'm standing by the door and I look over at the Elvis Costello poster, at his eyes, watching her, watching us, and I try to get her away from it, so I tell her to come over here, sit down, and she thinks I want to hug her or something and she comes over to me and puts her arms around my back and says something like 'I think we've all lost some sort of feeling.

Writing a novel is not method acting and I find it easy to step out of it at cocktail hour.

what's right? If you want something, you have the right to take it. If you want to do something, you have the right to do it.

I feel like I'm not smart enough to answer the questions I'm asked.

After a while you learn that everything stops.

I don't want to care. If I care about things, it'll just be worse, it'll just be another thing to worry about. It's less painful if I don't care.

If I want to write a movie, I'll write a screenplay, but if I have an idea for a book, it's something that I think can only be done novelistically.