At Princeton I wrote my junior paper on Virginia Woolf, and for my senior thesis I wrote on Samuel Beckett. I wrote some about "Between the Acts" and "Mrs. Dalloway'' but mostly about "To the Lighthouse." With Beckett I focused, perversely, on his novels, "Molloy," "Malone Dies," and "The Unnamable." That's when I decided I should never write again.

I don't believe in a conspiracy to hide the existence of extraterrestrial life.

I'm not reading currently because I'm getting revisions of a novel. If I read while I'm writing I will unconsciously plagiarize and go to jail.

You're kinda striding the line of what's yours and theirs. What's yours, what's mine, what's ours as creators of it and what's yours as owners.

Anxiety is part of creativity, the need to get something out, the need to be rid of something or to get in touch with something within.

I'm always trying to perfect the romantic comedy, though.

Maybe with "Californication" the character was partly based on Rick Moody. I read him and Jay McInerney, the templates for this bad boy novelist.