With nonfiction, I go in trying to be really honest about what my preconceptions are.

I'm always nice when I do drugs. But, you know, I'm nicer on the drug called "writing."

I think people have come to expect that in artistic representation; that every work of art should be a work of extravagant hope.

My stories, I can understand them as a little toy that you wind up and you put it on the floor and it just goes under the coach. That I get. Beyond that, I'm a little lost.

I've had the thought that a person's 'artistic vision' is really just the cumulative combination of whatever particular stances he has sincerely occupied during his creative life - even if some of those might appear contradictory.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that whatever weirdness was going to be in there, I felt, had to be earned. And it had to be required by the emotional needs of the book.

If you want to be good, all you've got to do is be good.