Whenever somebody says they need an angle for their story I always fear that they've got an idea and they want me to fit into it or they want me to come up with an idea myself or I'm supposed to be more revealing than I've been, and to me it just sounds like something I don't want to do.

I've got huge tubs full of X-Files memorobilia that I can sell on eBay.

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

I understand the self-loathing and the resentment, and the discipline that it takes to sit down in front of a typewriter or computer every single day, whether it's going well or not going well.

Larry Grobel's interviews are informative and insightful without being pandering or intrusive. You get the sense at all times of both intelligence at work-the interviewee's and Grobel's-both inspired by the encounter.

I don't know if [Samuel] Beckett is something you ever bring to the beach - get out of the water, towel off, and start reading some of "The Unnamable." Although, because it's the kind of book you can open to any page and start reading, it is beach reading in that way.

If I were gay, you know. I think Woody Allen is one of a long list of men I might go gay for.