The book is openly a kind of spiritual autobiography, but the trick is that on any other level it's a kind of insane collage of fragments of memory.

I'd excluded New York from my writing, and then I came back and I fell in love with it all over again... The energy comes from an absence, that yearning for New York when you are not there.

I want what we all want," said Carl. "To move certain parts of the interior of myself into the exterior world, to see if they can be embraced.

One of the things that novels have tended not to concentrate on over the centuries is the fact that people read books.

Yes! I'm the slowest comic-book writer on Earth.

I'm a firm believer that there are no rules in art. Every trajectory is different.

But the day I can't shrug off a twinge of self-pity, is the day I'm washed up for keeps.