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

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.

I always hoped that I would settle down with someone. Marriage, I could really give two shits about, as an institution, but it makes things easier.

Don't come to New York until you've finished a book. It's too expensive. You'll never write anything. You'll spend all your time working to pay the rent.

Most contemporary fiction sucks. It's intellectually dishonest, often morally dishonest. It's cheap and easy. It pretends to be deep but is really quite shallow.

Writing fiction is fundamentally an irrational act.

Most people who are HIV positive are on drugs and that gets their viral load so low that it's harder to transmit it. Most new infections come from people who don't know they're infected.