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

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.

I've always felt that the writing I responded to most - the novels and stories that compelled me, that felt like they described the world I live in, with all of its subjectivity, irrationality, and paradox, were those which made free use of myths and symbols, fantastic occurences, florid metaphors, linguistic experiments, etcetera - to depict the experiences of relatively 'realistic' characters - on the level of their emotions and psychology, rather than in terms of what kinds of lives they led or what kind of events they experience.

I want to write books that can be read a hundred years from now, and readers wouldn't be bogged down by irrelevant details.

I'm a serial deconstructor of my own authority in certain areas.

There's never any percentage in being ahead of your time.

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.