There are stylists I really love. I'm a huge Joan Didion fan - if I wrote something that she might like, then I'd feel very proud. I want the action to move as quickly as it does in A Book of Common Prayer, where one thing bonks right into another very quickly.

I seem to get the best work when I'm angry and depressed and alienated.

The possibility of disaster remains horrific to me. Like when you know everything's about to go wrong in a way that's not controllable or knowable.

I always want to try and see what the appeal is in anything. It's the healthiest and most honest approach.

Over the past 40 years, the tradition of Southern progressivism has been somewhat successfully erased by right-wing revisionist historians.

Diagnoses exist to help get people services they need - but there's no such thing as mental illness. We're all mentally ill.

I grew up around some people whose parents toured a lot: tough on the marriage, tough on the kids.