I don't paint anymore. I haven't since I abandoned it at 19, in order to begin writing seriously.

I plan less and less. It's a great benefit of writing lots, that you get good at holding long narratives in your head like a virtual space.

Someday I would change my name to Shut Up and save everybody a lot of time.

For me, music is sort of the art that I can't incorporate into my person the way I want to.

When Rolling Stone handed me this crazy assignment to be in the studio with James Brown, they had the misapprehension that I'd written for them already just because I claimed my character had.

By removing the stories from the morass of things that surround us, I'm hoping to achieve some kind of purer approach to emotional life.

Apparently Brooklyn needn't always push itself to be something else, something conscious and anxious, something pointed toward Manhattan.... Brooklyn might sometimes also be pleased, as here on Flatbush, to be its grubby, enduring self.