I don't laugh that much, but I do like humorous books, and I like to entertain readers that way.

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

Whenever I wrote fiction, people always seemed to think that what I wrote was true, that it was entirely autobiographical. And when I would write non-fiction, they often accused me of exaggeration and fictionalization.

A lot of writing is a form of seeing - putting down what you see in terms of action and landscape.

I promote my own self-hatred.

Even when I was living below the poverty line as a novelist, I was still living better than 99.5% of the human population of the world. But in my little, soft realm of trying to amuse a few dozen middle-class people with my books and articles, I did struggle to survive in my own way.

Some ego is involved because I guess one wants to be perceived as a good clown and one puts one's name on the art; but it's so hard to do anything in life, trapped as we are in our bodies, that is purely selfless for others... somehow the self is always involved.