I listened to classic rock and roll, and punk rock. 'Goon Squad' provides a pretty accurate playlist of my teenage years, though it leaves out 'The Who,' which was my absolute favorite band.

I haven't had writer's block. I think it's because my process involves writing very badly.

Technology makes everyone feel old. A laptop is old after two years. Someone always has something newer. Everyone seems to feel obsolete now, even the young.

I felt no shame in these activities, because I understood what almost no one else seemed to grasp: that there was only an infinitesimal difference, a difference so small that it barely existed except as a figment of the human imagination, between working in a tall green glass building on Park Avenue and collecting litter in a park. In fact, there may have been no difference at all.

The bottom line is that I like my first drafts to be blind, unconscious, messy efforts; that's what gets me the best material.

I guess it's always romantic when two people fall in love.... Even if it turns out not to be real.

What he needed was to find fifty more people like him, who had stopped being themselves without realizing it.