Jay-Z isn't actually any better than James Joyce even though more people understand him. I'm more interested in what's meaningful within the lives of individuals. And fiction will always be central to the lives of certain people, which is all that matters.

I'm going to write what I feel like writing, which is a great place to be. But it can be hard to get there. It's so easy to get stricken with one kind of self-consciousness or another.

During the 90s, I watched a lot of people getting fat and prosperous, and I thought, culture itself is the casualty of this.

I like writing sentences. It's tactile and exciting. Whereas working at the level of the scene is a more cerebral pleasure.

People will continue to make movies. But I do think the economic model of the studio movie is closing in on a kind of systemic collapse.

Sacrificing one's life on the altar of literature is in some ways like sacrificing a goat to some malicious spirit. It's not always a humane or necessary decision.

I think having power ingrains people with a conservatism. There's a tendency to hedge one's bets. (Which explains a lot, actually, about why the movie business is the way it is, and why the publishing industry is too.)