Have your adventures, make your mistakes, and choose your friends poorly -- all these make for great stories.

That’s the American Dream: to make your life into something you can sell.

So often with beginning writers, the story that they want to start with is the most important story of their life - my molestation, my this, my horrible drug addiction - they want to tell that most important story, and they don't have the skills to tell it yet, so it ends up becoming a comedy. A powerful story told poorly becomes funny, it just makes people laugh behind their hands.

Personal identity seems like it's just such an American archetype, from Holly Golightly re-inventing herself in 'Breakfast At Tiffany's' to Jay Gatsby in 'The Great Gatsby.' It seems like the sort of archetypal American issue. If you're given the freedom to be anything, or be anyone, what do you do with it?

As the stupidest person in the room, I always had the most to gain.

First your parents, they give you your life, but then they try to give you their life.

Because everything up to now is a story and everything after now is a story.