I learned to write fiction the way I learned to read fiction - by skipping the parts that bored me.

No matter how enormous a novel may become, the physical act of reading determines that there's no way it can become a communal experience. To read is intimate. It's almost masturbatory.

As much as I revere great writing, and am still humbled by it, literary activities are no longer esoteric to me. When I read a great novel - something that I could never have written myself - I'm still looking at it a little bit like a technician.

I listen to music all the time. I write while listening to music. And I tell myself that the music nourishes the art forms that I do master and domesticate, and have authority over.

When people call something "original," 9 out of 10 times they just don't know the references or original sources involved.

Music still sort of hangs up there in the sky for me as this thing that moves me so much, but I can't really make it. It's like a car I can't drive.

I prefer old books and find them more relevant. I dislike new books. It's like drinking wine that's not ready.