I had always wanted to be a writer who confused genre boundaries and who was read in multiple contexts.

When I write lyrics, I really do go into an automatic folk appropriation mode... I see the vernacular register of 20th century song as being a bunch of forms to adapt and reconfigure.

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

I learned to write fiction the way I learned to read fiction - by skipping the parts that bored me.

I try not to become too regular an addict of any one subculture.

Every book is a kind of experiment in doing something that feels impossible.

The arts and a belief in the values of the civil rights movement, in the overwhelming virtue of diversity, these were our religion. My parents worshipped those ideals.