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.

It was only as I wrote about fear that I began to find paths of access to feelings that were intolerable to me then.

I don't write about anything I don't love even if that love sometimes gets all screwed up and tormented.

I'm not planning what I listen to, except when I think the music can guide me to some emotional place I want to be reminded of.

I've never related to the work geek at all-it sounds much more horrible than nerd. Like a freak biting a chicken's head off in a sideshow.

I definitely care about how the concept of New York punk was constructed, and why it mattered. But I wasn't gonna do that. Partly because I'm not a great journalist...

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