I would say that Edgar Allan Poe, [Georges] Perec, Thomas Pynchon, and [Jorge Luis] Borges are all boy-writers. These are writers who take... a kind of demonic joy in writing.

After something crystallizes, I can write ferociously and write novels in six months, which in the past would have taken me two years.

How can you think about the world without factoring in the unforseen, the fluke event?

Farts come from no one and nowhere; they are anonymous emanations that belong to the group as a whole, and even when every person in the room can point to the culprit, the only sane course of action is denial.

Stories surge up out of nowhere, and if they feel compelling, you follow them. You let them unfold inside you and see where they are going to lead.

I have difficulty orienting myself in space, and I'm probably one of the few people who gets lost in Manhattan.

All through my writing life I've had this impulse to write autobiographical works.