We're like a gardener with a hose and our attention is water - we can water flowers or we can water weeds.

Well, I stopped drinking. That was actually a big deal. I didn't go through any harrowing rock-bottom experience. I just made a decision to stop drinking.

There's something melancholy about professors because they're chronically abandoned. They form these lovely relationships with students and then the students leave and the professors stay the same. It's like they're chronically abandoned.

I find myself going out less and less. When you're 22 and see older people start to do that, it's depressing, but once you hit 30, you think, 'Wow, I've been working all week - it might be really nice to stay in!

The purpose of fiction is to combat loneliness.

After a brief period in which I had let many a Southern Californian convince me that it was all 'in my mind,' I am once again officially allergic to dogs.

The reflexive allergy to L.A. that a lot of New Yorkers have, I feel like it's kind of nonsense.