And it's kind of my own fault too, in the sense that I've used my own life as a literary device so much. I think people feel very comfortable reviewing the idea of me, as opposed to what I've actually written. I find that most of the time, when people write about one of my books, they're really just writing about what they think I may or may not represent, as sort of this abstract entity. Is that unfair? Not really. If I put myself in this position where I'm going to kind of weave elements of memoir into almost everything, well, I suppose that's going to happen.

Who Am I? Or (Perhaps More Accurately) Who Else Could Be Me?

But no matter how many times we re-rank the presidents, in another 200 years, the top presidents will still be Washington and Lincoln and Jefferson, because they defined what a president is. They are the idea, and you can't be better than the idea.

Sometimes I wonder what will be the air conditioning of my dying days. What thing will they add that will make it impossible to be uncomfortable? Because I do assume that as an old person, I will be very comfortable. There will be something - a drug or some way to impact the air around me - that when I relax, I'm gonna feel great. So I do look forward to that.

If I knew I was going to die at a specific moment in the future, it would be nice to be able to control what song I was listening to; this is why I always bring my iPod on airplanes.

The problem a lot of writers have is that they really enjoy people saying, "You're brilliant." They let their self-perception be dictated by reader response. But if you're going to let other people make you feel good, you're going to end up feeling bad when they say the opposite. You've got to be a cultural stoic. Then you won't be devastated by people who respond negatively. Of course, the downside is that it sort of stops you from being able to enjoy people liking your work.

People are more interested in reading bombastic ideas, whether they're positive or negative. Part of me has sort of lost interest in doing criticism because of that. I've always realized that criticism is basically autobiography. Obviously in my criticism, it's very clear that it's autobiography, but I think it's that way for everybody.