Stories, as much as we like to talk about them, retrospectively, as emanations of theme or worldview or intention, occur primarily as technical objects when they're being written. Or at least they do for me. They're the result of thousands of decisions made at speed during revision.

There comes that phase in life when, tired of losing, you decide to stop losing, then continue losing. Then you decide to really stop losing, and continue losing. The losing goes on and on so long you begin to watch with curiosity, wondering how low you can go.

Sometimes I just turn on the TV and I'm like, wait a minute, that guy [Donald Trump]? It's incredible that he did all those things and he still won. It's hard to process.

As a kid, I had a real fascination with perverse, off-color, and kind of risky things, and I also had a very sanctimonious Catholic, purist side.

All along, my mantra was: Don't write unless it contributes to the emotion, and do anything you do in service of the emotion only.

One of the inspiring things about Susan Sarandon career is that there's a quality of real fearlessness in it - you seem to be in it for the challenge and the experience.

A writer writes what interests him and what he can manage, and what he can make live, as Flannery O'Connor said. So my reaction to someone saying "You must!" or "You should!" or even "Hey, why don't you?" is basically to sort of shrug and politely walk off and do whatever I want to do. It's nobody else's business, really, and even if I happened to agree with one of those "musts" or "shoulds" what would I do about it, if my heart wasn't in it?