If you don't have people that the reader cares about and stories that are gripping, you've got nothing.

Being somewhere but not completely: that was home for Danny. . . . All he needed was a cellphone or I-access, or both at once, or even just a plan to leave wherever he was and go someplace else really really soon.

A bit of theory as we settle down for lunch: the waiter's treatment of Kitty is actually a kind of sandwich, with the bottom bread being the bored and slightly effete way he normally acts with customers, the middle being the crazed and abnormal way he feels around this famous nineteen-year-old girl, and the top bread being his attempt to contain and conceal this alien middle layer with some mode of behavior that at least approximates the bottom layer of boredom and effeteness that is his norm.

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

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

Goon Squad' took about three years to write and that's the short end. My second novel, 'Look at Me,' took six years.

We live in a moment and a culture when reading is really endangered. There's simply no way to write well, though, if you're not reading well.