You don’t have the slightest idea of what it means to write a scene and a character in the English language, with images and words chock full of received meaning.

Nerds are just deep, and neurotic, fans. Needy fans. We're all nerds, on one subject or another.

I've been an advocate against the view of the writer as a partitioned genius hanging in conceptual space, or up on a mountain, a bringer of Promethean fire, some unique transmission that comes out of nowhere. I prefer the opposite view - that writers come from somewhere. They read things, and they think about them, and they incorporate other people's thoughts.

My writing life is pretty simple - I try to work every day, almost always in the mornings - and I can only write fiction effectively for about three or at the most four hours. No big mysteries, I just sit down and try to advance the cause a little bit every day.

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

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

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.