My father, God bless him, thought it was such an impossible desire to be able to make a living the way I do. I was destined to go into the bar business like him or go to college and be a lawyer. I was not encouraged, and in a way maybe that made me more hardheadedly committed to being a writer.

The older you get, the more you live with ghosts.

The difference of human being behind the guy on the page is in writing, I'm no longer conscious of personal repercussions because for that moment they don't exist. At times, I tell myself, Well, I can always go back and change that or take it out, and I find out that I rarely do. Couple little things here and there: Do unto others. Be a good scout. With all the ironies that entails, I go by that. That's a good way to live.

My father, God bless him, thought it was such an impossible desire to be able to make a living the way I do. I was destined to go into the bar business like him or go to college and be a lawyer. I was not encouraged, and in a way maybe that made me more hardheadedly committed to being a writer.

They say nobody has the attention span to read great books early in life. If I start to read something good, I'll look and it's 86 pages already. Attention span. What are they talking about? If it's good, it'll drag you in.

People speaking into handheld devices while they walk down the street and saying to the device, "I'm walking down the street now." People are enslaved. I was just up in the country for a few days last week and it was great: no television, no telephone, no nothing. I walked through the woods, sat around, smoked. And it was lovely. I think the desire to be free has mutated, and we now live in an era when the slaves celebrate their slavery - this whole corporate concept of being part of a "team" at work.

I think the tendency with parents is to make your kid not unlike the next kid but to overprotect and say, "My way's better than whatever you've got in mind." But by the time that tie's over that shoulder and they're drinking that obligatory brewski with the boys, it's like, Man, who are you people?