I've always stayed on the periphery of things. When I used to go to the punk clubs and things like that, I was never up front. I always wanted to be in the back, or on the side, because I wanted to get the whole view, rather than be staring up at someone's nostrils.

I never accepted why there should be some invisible, wavy cutoff line separating Great Fiction from phosphorescent beauties and dollhouse miniatures, novels that contain a whole world in a snow globe.

In 2008, Barack Obama did get Democrats hyperventilating, whipped up to a creamy froth, while John McCain creaked ahead like a cranky granddad whom Republicans let move to the front of the buffet line, deferring to seniority, as they had in 1996, when Bob Dole turtled to the top of the ticket.

It's one thing to fight for what you believe in, another thing to fight for what others believe in.

With 'Black Swan,' the ballerina saga flips its tiara and goes on a hallucinatory bender, a scary acid trip where transfiguration and disfiguration meet.

I've always stayed on the periphery of things. When I used to go to the punk clubs and things like that, I was never up front. I always wanted to be in the back, or on the side, because I wanted to get the whole view, rather than be staring up at someone's nostrils.

At 'The Village Voice,' there were all these fevers inside the offices, that would break out into full-scale rumbles between writers.