I usually write in my underwear, with a space heater running full blast, and three dogs sleeping at me feet.

Fobbit is fast, razor sharp, and seven kinds of hilarious. Thank you, Mr. Abrams, for the much needed salve--it feels good to finally laugh about Iraq. Fobbit deserves a place alongside Slaughterhouse Five and Catch-22 as one of our great comic novels about the absurdity of war.

My neediness is not a hole to be filled but something beneath the skin scratching to get out.

I know I've lost my mind. But I'm not concerned, because it's the first thing I've lost in a long time that actually feels good.

I usually write in my underwear, with a space heater running full blast, and three dogs sleeping at me feet.

Reading is, at its best, not an escape; it is genuine experience. A novel is not a monologue, but a conversation, a collaboration between writer and reader, an invaluable exchange of human conditions.

It's not easy getting old, you know. Things become a lot less clear.