I'm a big Philip Roth fan. I think "American Pastoral" is the great American novel of the past 30 to 40 years. It's a novel about what happened in the 1960s, and I think America is still dealing with what happened then. It's devastatingly sad.

Garry Shandling is someone I've publicly gone gay for, for jokes. Oh and anyone in the Twilight movies. I don't know any of their names, but all of them. The wolves, the vampires? They're all fantastic.

Most journalists expect me to answer all their questions about aliens and spaceships.

I love dogs. They live in the moment and don't care about anything except affection and food. They're loyal and happy. Humans are just too damn complicated.

I think the real heroic teachers are the ones who work with kids, like my mom and my sister do.

When I was a kid I ate sports books up, like "Winners Never Quit" by Phil Pepe. That was like my bible.

As I've gotten older I've become a devotee of 19th-century authors, such as Charles Dickens and George Eliot.