Context is everything. Dress me up and see. I'm a carnival barker, an auctioneer, a downtown performance artist, a speaker in tongues, a senator drunk on filibuster. I've got Tourette's. My mouth won't quit, though mostly I whisper or subvocalize like I'm reading aloud, my Adam's apple bobbing, jaw muscle beating like a miniature heart under my cheek, the noise suppressed, the words escaping silently, mere ghosts of themselves, husks of empty breath and tone.

I had an all-Fear of Music iPod, just versions of the 11 songs from the record. No other songs allowed.

You discovered yourself and what really mattered only after you passed through the lens of the fairy tale, imposed on every human female and male alike, that someone existed out in the forest of the world for you to love and marry.

I've had the odd good luck of starting slowly and building gradually, something few writers are allowed anymore. As a result I've seen each of my books called the breakthrough. And each was, in its way.

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.

Some people have things written all over their faces; the big guy had a couple of words misspelled in crayon on his.

Reading and writing are the same thing; it's just one's the more active and the other's the more passive. They flow into each other.