I've never been that confident. I don't tend to think, swaggeringly, I'm going to ace this. It's just not who I am.

th blu nyt th stRs u can't c th hum tht nevr gOs awy

But it was another girl, young and new to the city, fiddling with her keys.

'Look at Me' started with Rockford, Illinois and New York and the question of how much image culture was changing our inner lives. That's an abstract idea; you don't think that's going to be a rocking work of fiction, but it seemed to fuse in a way that was interesting.

I don't really know where my ideas come from. I start with a time and a place. That's what I need to get started, and an intellectual question.

We lie. That's what we do. You're selling me a line of bullshit and you want me to sell you a line of bullshit back so you can write a major line of bullshit and be paid for it.

One area I have a huge amount of trouble in is writing about myself. I get a heavy, almost depressed feeling.