Sometimes I would take Nietzsche or something. And I wouldn't read it, but more just scan the words. Sometimes I would get whatever the popular thing at the time was. I don't know, something like Bret Easton Ellis. It was just a very random, inefficient education.

I had an idea to write something set back around the Civil War era, but I was just way too ignorant to think I could start it any time soon.

I don't think about the reader in any conscious way that impacts the writing, as far as, Hey, most readers would like this! But at the same time, if it were presented to me: "John, you're going to write a novel. It's going to take you a few years. When you're done with it, there's a law that no one's allowed to read it." I don't think I would write it. I want someone to read it!

It's nice not to have to worry about applying for things. It's really a different existence.

None of my English teachers in college were praising me or telling me I was anything special. But then in creative writing classes they were. And I enjoyed those more anyway.

I know people who are really talented at writing, and they just don't ever make it happen because they're also good at other things.

It didn't occur to me that I could be a writer until college. I saw all these people around me training to be doctors, or historians, or C.E.O.'s or whatnot, and I thought, Maybe I want to be a writer.