I think I'm a shy, self-conscious person who thinks he's being looked at and tries to look okay. Not in a hottie, narcissistic way necessarily.

I can tell from about 20 yards away when someone has a manuscript for me. I can just tell - they have that look.

My work generally tends to be an all-out, 360-degree subversive take on everything, most of all my own notion of myself as a son, father, husband, human being and male in this culture.

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

The interesting thing about something in the back of your mind is that it can travel pretty far back in your mind.

“Et Tu, Babe” was born out of my absolute certainty that a writer’s life was solitary and insular, and I was happy with that. I love reading and writing, it’s my whole life.

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