I remember selling my first short story and thinking, Oh my god, I sold something for fifty dollars! That gives me the authority to say I'm a writer and to actually write more things! It legitimized the activity.

I want out of the labels. I don't want my whole life crammed into a single word. A story. I want to find something else, unknowable, some place to be that's not on the map. A real adventure.' A spinx. A mystery. A blank. Unknown. Undefined.

It's not living alone if you keep a rifle under the bed.

Did you ever think about life as a metaphor for television?

Don't write about your most emotionally charged moment as a learning thing.

All human beings search for either reasons to be good, or excuses to be bad.

The money is in television. Books are not the dominant medium of our time, so fewer people will create them. In a sad way, books have become a form of "comfort food" we expect to lull us to sleep.