There's this resistance to actually talking to people who are smarter than you about things and I don't know why that is.

I was twenty-one when I was hired by Planned Parenthood. It was my first work experience outside of either temping or working for my father at his store.

My belief that the publishing industry is run by prigs and cowards dates back to many years before I even had the idea for the book.

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.

I don't think that I can be settled and I don't think that I would ever want to be.

I think American literature is in a tedious place, horrible place. I can't even engage with it.

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