Kids grow up connected to nothing these days, plugged in and living lives boosted to them from other people.

We can spend our lives letting the world tell us who we are. Sane or insane. Saints or sex addicts. Heroes or victims. Letting history tell us how good or bad we are. Letting our past decide our future. Or we can decide for ourselves. And maybe it's our job to invent something better.

Sex pretty much cures everything.

A writer’s job is to cultivate what can go wrong.

Leonardo's Mona Lisa is just a thousand thousand smears of paint. Michelangelo's David is just a million hits with a hammer. We're all of us a million bits put together the right way.

In the end, it's never what you worry about that gets you.

So this is why I write. Because most times, your life isn’t funny the first time through. Most times, you can hardly stand it. That’s why I write, because life never works except in retrospect. And writing makes you look back. Because since you can’t control life, at least you can control your version.