Lies are just another kind of storytelling, but with the very distinct and enlivening motive of desperation. Since writers are by nature desperate creatures, they usually do a pretty good (or pretty awful, but always interesting) job of lying.

You are only pretentious if you are not sincere.

I say, if you're going to eat a creature alive, you have to expect some screaming. That is the carnivore's burden.

So I am a product of the Internet, and to some degree a product of this sensibility of constant cultural reference.

I'm not a particularly religious person, but that feeling of getting transmissions from someplace else, even if it's from your own consciousness, is very, very real. To me, at least.

What I collect? Interesting jobs. Always to my thrill and excitement, but ultimately to my exhaustion, I collect interesting jobs. If an interesting job comes along, I take it; that's why I do so many things. I'm lucky to be able to.

People who run for president seriously and people who become president enter a bizarre secret society in which they have had an experience that none of us will ever have.