Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the dead.

I learned I could be miserable anywhere in the world. I learned I really was an American.

What I don't like about teaching is hearing myself say the same thing. I mean, you just want to sort of shoot yourself after a while. But you don't have a million different ways of thinking about what you have been thinking about for many years. And then there's the truism that you're only as good as your students. If they're not into what's going on, it doesn't matter who you are.

Obviously the Internet makes everything easier - you get people's addresses and so on and everything seems much more accessible.

I think the major device for me is that narrator's voice. I'm always trying to find a different kind of form to tell whatever story it is, and I wish that weren't so, because it drives me crazy.

Laughing and crying are very similar. Sometimes people go from laughing to crying, or crying to laughing. I remember being at someone's wedding and she couldn't stop laughing, through the whole ceremony. If she'd been crying, it would have seemed more "normal," though.

Boring people don't know they're boring. That's the problem with boring people.