Most all of the writers I admired when I was in my teens and twenties died young. Fitzgerald lived the longest. He was 44. Dylan Thomas was 39. And then once you're approaching 40, you suddenly think, "Well, maybe I would like to live longer than Fitzgerald or Thomas."

I don't think I've left a trail of weeping women in my wake. I mean, the number of serious relationships I've had has not been into double digits.

Something changed. Somewhere along the line you stopped accelerating.

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

I remain a fan of my friend Bret Easton Ellis's 'American Psycho.' I think as a book about New York in the '80s it was pretty excellent.

You described the feeling you’d always had of being misplaced, of always standing to one side of yourself, of watching yourself in the world even as you were being in the world, and wondering if this was how everyone felt. That you always believed that other people had a clearer idea of what they were doing, and didn’t worry quite so much about why.

It's the cynics who never get married.