I think books can cure cancer and grow back hair. I can't say it enough. For me, that's why it's so syrupy. It's both syrupy and over the top, and overly sincere, and also dead true. What else can I tell you? A writer can't catch a cab half the time, but when there's a demagogue, when there's a government that wants to suppress, there's a reason that writers end up getting in trouble. It's such a subversive form that can really change people.

I literally feel like books saved my life. I found these people. Me reading Camus and Kafka, all of the tortured teenager stuff of someone who's falling in love with books. These people, these writers had the questions. They may not have had the answers, but they're not afraid to look at the questions head on. It was just life-changing for me. Yeah, books, honestly, I can't even tell you. I feel saved by books; I feel like they let me be who I was and find the world I wanted to be in.

I think books can cure cancer and grow back hair. I can't say it enough. For me, that's why it's so syrupy. It's both syrupy and over the top, and overly sincere, and also dead true. What else can I tell you? A writer can't catch a cab half the time, but when there's a demagogue, when there's a government that wants to suppress, there's a reason that writers end up getting in trouble. It's such a subversive form that can really change people.

I'd much prefer my books to shoes...In the summer I sometimes take walks without shoes but never without a novel.

The more foreign to me, to my existence, to your core existence, the more foreign the foreign language, it's really moving to me to think, to get to experience my own story crossing those boundaries. To have that experience that I so cherished as a reader. I can't believe this. To me, it's really nice because that would be a thing where I'm like, "There may be lots of Jews in my work. I'm not writing stories for Jews. I'm telling stories about people, and Jews are people, too."

I have to work hard and wear pants. I've worked really hard these last years, and since everything is coming together at the same time, I had to move the play back. I'm kind of in love with my theater agent. I'm a true naïve about the theater, a total innocent. He says to me, have you ever been to a rehearsal room? Do you realize you are opening at the Public in New York? You do understand that the audience will be New York theater people?

Turn off your cell phone. Honestly, if you want to get work done, you’ve got to learn to unplug. No texting, no email, no Facebook, no Instagram. Whatever it is you’re doing, it needs to stop while you write... A lot of the time (and this is fully goofy to admit), I’ll write with earplugs in - even if it’s dead silent at home.