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.

There's something about the rhythms of language that correspond to the rhythms of our own bodies.

But the day I can't shrug off a twinge of self-pity, is the day I'm washed up for keeps.

Develop your pawns or Hulk will smash.

I'm not a sociologist, and the novel has often concerned itself with sociology. It's one of the generating forces that's made fiction interesting to people. But that's not my concern. I'm interested in psychology. And also certain philosophical questions about the world.

Writing is a private discipline, in a field of companions.

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.