Art is only great if it's uncodifiable. If art isn't scaring you, if it's not making you upset, then I don't think it's actually doing anything.

AIDS was one of those diseases that a lot of people tried to claim ownership over, and especially as someone who was, fortunately never HIV positive, I wanted to avoid any appearance of doing that.

Writing fiction is fundamentally an irrational act.

Losing my virginity was very boring.

I'm a novelist. I think fiction is important or I wouldn't be doing it, but most of it's bad.

It's nice to have something you think separates you from the mainstream and gives you perspective on that, but it can become very limiting at the same time if it's something you use to artificially define yourself.

We had the fun of being outlaws. But there's a whole generation now coming up with new gender identities. For this generation of kids who don't think that being gay is anything special, they might be more interesting than any of us.