What you experience in the army, aged 18 to 21, is what you take through all your life. You cross invisible lines: you shoot someone, get shot, break into people's houses. It's naive to think you won't carry anything into your life.

Sometimes, when you are in a really constrained situation, it makes you more focused about what you want to say and where you're heading. The most beautiful love poems that were ever written are sonnets, composed in a very constraining form.

I see creative-writing classes as some sort of AA meeting. It is more of a support group for people who write than an actual course in which you learn writing skills. This support group is extremely important because there is something very lonely about writing.

My first and biggest love was always fiction writing. But it is a very lonely pastime.

I think that becoming a parent kind of made me try to be more responsible. And it made me much more stressful.

Life is one heck of an invention. It is better than the iPhone 4S and Coke Zero combined.

I don't need art to tell me people are assholes. I can just go into the streets.