I've always been inspired by Don Quixote as a role model of sorts, of the power of books to sort of make you insane in maybe a beautiful way.

Something has happened where you almost never grow up in America. Maybe it's the greater wealth.

It's hard for me to think of writing a novel, because it takes so long.

I hid my underwear beneath a parked Peugeot.

I've really never written about my relationships, or things like that. I wouldn't want to divulge things that were too private.

After my first novel, my mother said to me, 'Why don't you make your writing more funny? You're so funny in person.' Because my first novel was rather dark. And I don't know, but something about what she said was true. 'Yes, why don't I?' Maybe I was afraid to be funny in the writing. But since then, seven books later, almost everything I've done has a comedic edge to it.

It was one of those days when every time I went to go out the door, something grabbed me in the back of the brain and said, lie down and masturbate one more time.