For me, the first sign of oncoming madness is that I'm unable to write.

When you deal with nonfiction you deal with human characters.

There is, in fact, an incredible freedom in having nothing left to lose.

And it's California, where everything is powerfully strange. Everyone wants it to be home. Everyone left where he or she was from with dreams of transformation. Everyone runs away to California at least once, or at least all the lonely, hungry people do.

My students know I have a life, they know I've written about my life. They know some detail, probably more than they know about their physics teacher, but I would've told them anyway!

The biggest fear of my life is living. My second biggest fear is dying.

I either want to be completely recovered or completely emaciated. It's the in between that I can't stand, the limbo of failure where you know that you haven't done your best at one or the other: dying or living.