Face it, you hate every single boy on the face of the Earth!" "That's not TRUE, I just hate all these obnoxious, extroverted, pseudo-bohemian art-school losers

I really want people to read the book, and bookstores never sold an issue of Eightball because nobody knew what it was.

As soon as I'm finished with it, it feels like an impersonal project. Like, "Well, I did another book."

I think politics has an influence on my work now, perhaps more so than when I was a childless young man, but I hope never to deal with these kinds of issues in anything more than a covert manner. I'm more interested in figuring out what I think than in pronouncing my views to the world.

In a movie, you have to be mindful that no budget is going to be able to deal with running around the globe at every whim of the writer.

I tend to be the type who is overly polite and sort of ingratiating to other people.

I see a lot of possibilities in the age of my characters - between 18 and 21. You have a window of opportunity when you leave your childhood behind and have this chance to become what you always wanted to be. For me, that was a time when I could have gone many different ways. I was in flux and deciding what kind of person I would become. There's something interesting about the vision of what that will be and the reality of making that happen, and how you really are what you are. Unless you're "in character," it's impossible to get around that.