Stand-up comedy had an interesting effect on me in terms of how I started to think about constructing things, because I really loved the interstices, the linkages, or lack thereof.

I'm in that very preliminary stage of wondering how exactly to "pressurize" the novel in some way I've never considered before.

I always thought of my work as being animated by a spirit of unhinged generosity.

I've always wanted to be a poet at the beginning. I would look at my grandparents' books and my parents' books. And in my family, a typical aspirational Jewish family, being a writer was very much exalted, and it seemed impossible to me, that I could ever do something like that.

I was an infinitely hot and dense dot.

Stand-up comedy had an interesting effect on me in terms of how I started to think about constructing things, because I really loved the interstices, the linkages, or lack thereof.

I thought of myself as kind of an anarchist all my whole adult life, from the days when I was 15 or 16.