I wish I could escape into some alter-ego, just so I could feel more comfortable onstage.

I've clearer idea of how I don't want to be seen - as someone who does what everyone wants them to.

[About Paz De La Huerta....] And there is this girl in the audience and she's gorgeous I can only kind of see her silhouette and she's getting like her t*ts out and I'm like: God, that's unusual.

A lot of the time when I write about the person that I love, I feel like I'm writing about New York.

I think that plain old intellectualism [can be] a more powerful force than the idea of the femme fatale.

I think the thing I really got from Ginsberg was that you can tell a story through kind of painting pictures with words. And when I found out that you could have a profession doing that, it was thrilling to me. It just became my passion immediately, playing with words and poetry.

When I was very young I was sort of floored by the fact that my mother and my father and everyone I knew was going to die one day, and myself too. I had a sort of a philosophical crisis. I couldn't believe that we were mortal.