If you understand writing as primarily engaging an imaginary reader, well, you've kind of been doing that your whole life. You walk into a room and you're engaging with imaginary strangers because you don't actually know who they are. For me, it was really empowering to say: this is a branch of entertainment and communication and engagement, as opposed to jumping over some perceived literary high bar. That was the buzzkill.

I live up in the hills, and I don't have any cable, and I have really slow satellite, so that does it - because being on the Internet is okay, but it takes a long time. I have a prediction that at some point, there will be a backlash. Like at the end of the '60s, there was that back-to-the-land movement, and I'm guessing that people will start consciously saying, "I'm not taking the phone with me," or "I'm only checking email x number of times a day," or "I'm not ever gonna self-Google," for example.

I was a straight arrow, a control freak. I didn't do drugs or drink, and this was the '70s. I didn't like the loss of control. Which isn't exactly right, because I didn't know what happened when you did drugs.

My mind has an obsessive, neurotic quality, but I also have a very hard work ethic. I know that a lot of people think, oh, you have a wild imagination. I don't, really. If ten people are sitting around and someone says, "Hey complete this sentence in a funny way," I'm never ahead of the pack.

Positive human action is not only possible, but pervasive; human beings can improve and choose light and so on. And this is all happening.

I think when you get to export your creative impulse into something, it kind of lessens that busy energy that can be so confrontational and pissy.

It's on us to investigate ourselves for any lingering sense that we are 'giving' equality. We are not. It is already given. And not by us.