There's a tradition in American fiction that is deadly serious and earnest - like the Steinbeckian social novel.

The fact is I'm very self-similar.

Reality, while generally probable, is not always interesting.

Houdini, the magician who debunked magic, could not bear to see the great rationalist [Arthur Conan] Doyle enchanted by ghosts and frauds. And so he did what any friend would: He set out to prove spiritualism false and rob his friend Doyle of the only comforting fiction that was keeping him sane. It was the least he could do.

Any time you try to create an Internet meme, automatic fail. That's like the worst thing you can do.

We cannot wholly rely, as though it were Medieval times, [on the notion that] the only reality is what we see in front of us. There are germs. There are changes that are happening in our planet's ecology that are happening over such a long period of time that we cannot see the changes.

I have a lot of cultural references that have amassed in my brain like shrapnel over the years that are meaningful to me.