The 20th century saw far greater catastrophes than September 11th, as bad as it was, and they didn't render literature or art or music irrelevant. In fact, I think that literature and art help us to understand - sometimes they provide narratives and metaphors for understanding history, for understanding recent catastrophes.

The most interesting things that happen in my books are usually the things that arise spontaneously, the things that surprise me.

What I'm nostalgic for is the idea of an edge in New York. There used to be these fringes of the city where civilization sort of ended, and therefore young people could live cheaply, or open nightclubs or art galleries, or even squat. That fringe moved out to New Jersey and Brooklyn. The whole idea of the metropolis is the centralization of like-minded souls, and when the central real estate becomes too expensive, the dreamers, the young poets, and the artists will go elsewhere.

I realized that I might not ever make it as a writer, that it might be because I wasn't good enough, or that it might be because the odds were just too long.

We've been hearing about the death of the novel ever since the day after Don Quixote was published.

Most of the people I write about have been ambitious outlanders who have been attracted to New York from other parts of the world.

There is a type of writer that can happily bury themselves in the country and dig very deep, but I'm not like that.