To spend your days in the company of naked men - that was the life for me. 'Turn a bit to the left, Jean-Claude. I long to capture the playful quality of your buttocks.

Their house had real hardcover books in it, and you often saw them lying open on the sofa, the words still warm from being read.

All I do is lie, and that has made me immune to compliments.

It can take years. With the first draft, I just write everything. With the second draft, it becomes so depressing for me, because I realize that I was fooled into thinking I'd written the story. I hadn't-I had just typed for a long time. So then I have to carve out a story from the 25 or so pages. It's in there somewhere-but I have to find it. I'll then write a third, fourth, and fifth draft, and so on.

The humor section is the last place an author wants to be. They put your stuff next to collections of Cathy cartoons.

I started writing when I was twenty, and my first book came out seventeen years later.

Scream at the mangled leather carcass lying at the foot of the stairs, and my parents would roar with laughter. "That's what you get for leaving your wallet on the kitchen table.