I like European and South American literature, but mostly I read nonfiction.

You don't have to go to New York and you don't have to go to LA or London. Go somewhere cheap. Go somewhere with free art museums and then just go to art museums.

I mean, many times your creative problem is accidentally your personal problem, but it's not quite the same.

Go to a place and just send out emails. That's my entire life. I go to countries and I ask, "Who would I know who lives here?" Not even do I know, but who exists and is on the planet.

I understand maybe some people are more impressionable than my hard, cynical self, but maybe they need to figure out how to be less of that.

Just send the emails and talk to people. Spend all your money on nail polish and opera tickets.

Once you leave, you're no longer of that country, but you are never actually of the country that you go to, and if you go back, you're not anywhere. You never belong to anything.