Brooklyn has a bit of everything - some of the most beautiful things in America, and some of the most wretched, ugly, impoverished things.

In a sense I am able to interrogate myself, address myself from that slight distance and enter a kind of dialogical relationship with myself. Because I'm saying, "Look, these are things that have happened to me, but how odd they are or how ordinary they are [is up to the reader to decide]."

You can look at my autobiographical pieces as source books... But, you see, my fiction doesn't revolve around autobiographical questions.

I believe that the whole idea of the consumer society is tottering. We've kept ourselves going by producing more and more goods, most of which people don't need. I'm anti-consumerism; I own four pairs of black Levis and that's it.

Our lives don't really belong to us, you see -- they belong to the world, and in spite of our efforts to make sense of it, the world is a place beyond our understanding.

Dismantling the architecture of my discontent

To feel estranged from language is to lose your own body.