My wife says I'm only comfortable when there's a fight. And it's true. The thing that motivates me is struggle.

I just started trying to figure out how to write [something] which was unlike anything anybody had ever seen, and once I felt like I had figured that out I tried to figure out what kind of book I could write that would be unlike anything anybody had ever seen. When I started writing A Million Little Pieces I felt like it was the right story with the style I had been looking for, and I just kept going.

There are no categories in contemporary art. There are no rules. Artists are given the freedom to make and create whatever they please and call it whatever they please. I identify with that system, or lack of system, much more than I do the landscape of contemporary publishing.

Every year, at 8:00 PM on the second Saturday of July, hundreds of people gather along a section of Los Angeles rail track to drop their pants and moon passing passenger trains.

Coming after all the bullshit related to A Million Little Pieces, nobody was expecting anything from me. No publisher, no agent, no one. Just me and the book. It was great.

The afternoon and the early evening slide by in a lidded daze where the ability to think in any identifiable way disappears and where every moment seems to be an eternity.

But love is different for every person. For some it's hate, for some it's joy, for some it's fear, for some it's jealousy, for some it's torture, for some it's peace. For some it's everything.