Famous people like to choose friends who won't go around repeating their conversations and details about them.

...clatter of a typwriter suggests that you're actually building something.

I don't think my life is more interesting than anybody else's.

The landscape is best described as 'pedestrian hostile.' It's pointless to try to take a walk, so I generally just stay in the room and think about shooting myself in the head.

At first, writing for The New Yorker was very scary to me. I couldn't imagine anything that I would write in that typeface.

There are a lot of college writing textbooks that will include essays and short stories, and after reading the story or essay, there will be questions such as "Have YOU Had any experience with a pedophile in YOUR family?" or "When was the last time you saw YOUR mother drunk?" and they're just really good at prompting stories. You answer the question, and sometimes that can spring into a story.

I like to reserve the right to write about whatever I like.