To produce that identity among young people required guinea pigs.

If you, like, consciously think about being cool, you're not cool. If you consciously think about being, like, different or original, you ain't different or original.

The art is just really mysterious. If I understood it more, maybe I would write more.

This country wants to live in the illusion that it is tolerant but also wants to be able to practice intolerance.

I think that most of my writer friends are really compulsive. I think that's great. It's wonderful for them. It's just not my bag. It's not the way I work. But again, it's probably why my friend has ten books out and I have two.

The U.S. that I had imagined was nowhere near as crazy and as incredibly damaging and brutal and indifferent as the U.S. that we're currently living in. I thought I was being transgressive, apocalyptic, an out-there person. And then reality lapped me, it just lapped me.

You're the only person I've ever met who can stand a bookstore as long as I can.