There is still the outside world to contend with. A world of backfiring cars, and their human equivalents.

Thank god I'm in England, because if I lived in any other country, it'd probably be the Philippines. Because with Rodrigo Duterte as the leader they couldn't really give me attitude on Donald Trump.

Sometimes with 'The New Yorker,' they have grammar rules that just don't feel right in my mouth.

No one reads to hear someone complain about the weather or how poorly their children are behaving. You have to give the readers a reason to turn the page. As a writer you have to invite someone to turn the page. And that is a skill you have to refine. That is why you have to read. You have to read to learn what it is that makes people turn the page.

I was first published in the newspaper put out by School of The Art Institute of Chicago, where I was a student. I wince to read that story nowadays, but I published it with an odd photo I'd found in a junk shop, and at least I still like the picture. I had a few things in the school paper, and then I got published in a small literary magazine. I hoped I would one day get published in The New Yorker, but I never allowed myself to actually believe it. Getting published is one of those things that feels just as good as you'd hoped it would.

You can't brace yourself for famine if you've never known hunger.

A lot of people don't know what they want, you know, or they're just kind of vague about it.