I don't like to publicly acknowledge being a Jew.

I always liked those characters in 'True Blood' who could turn into animals. I'd love to be an animal of some kind and run quickly through a forest.

I didn't think I was in a morbid mood, but it appears I am. My mind goes round and round trying to figure things out, but I always come back to the same two things: Loneliness and Death. Life ends before we figure anything out, most importantly how not to be lonely. Solitude is fine. But feeling like you have no one to love - abject lonliness - is not alright.

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.

The real self and the public self are intertwined, like a tumor around an organ, and you can't cut the tumor or you'll kill the organ, so they live together, until the tumor chokes the organ off - but which self is the tumor?. Or it's like something out of Star Trek. The Borg.

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

I certainly want to portray the importance of friendship. I had noticed in movies and TV shows that friends often treated one another terribly, and my friends, the few I have, are never cruel to me or unkind, so I wanted to convey that.