But I always need to identify with a character to write about him or her - and by "identify," I mean see the world through that person's eyes and have a strong sense of the inner logic of their acts and decisions, wacky or wrongheaded though they might be. In that sense, I think there's some of me in all of them.

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.

Time’s a goon, right? You gonna let that goon push you around?” Scotty shook his head. “The goon won.

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.

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.

Be willing and unafraid to write badly, because often the bad stuff...forms a base on which to build something better.

The problem was precision, perfection; the problem was digitization, which sucked the life out of everything that got smeared through its microscopic mesh.