As far as what I do, my value as a writer is certainly not to try to recapitulate a 19th century form. Certain styles of narrative don't conform to my style of experiencing the world.

I was an infinitely hot and dense dot.

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.

People have no idea how much work it is for a man to produce an ejaculation. You have this seminal vesicle churning out this fluid, the prostate gland producing an alkaline solution. It's like having five iron chefs in your crotch working to cook up this stuff.

I have an enduring, very robust infatuation with dictators. I have an infatuation with Stalin, Mao, and Mussolini. In the Paris Review interview I did (in 2013), I said my next book, this one, was going to be about Mussolini. I wound up only having a Mussolini cameo in the book.

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

Sometimes I think my purpose is as a saboteur when I'm working with other people, derailing what they're trying to do or taking things to a ludicrous extremity.