We moved to Baltimore, Maryland, in 1979, when I was five. The funny thing is that, even though Baltimore had one of the top murder rates in the country in those days, I grew up hearing about how dangerous New York was.

My first published novel, American Rust, took three and a half years of full-time work to write. But I wrote two apprentice novels before that.

No land was ever acquired honestly in the history of the earth.

At 16, I dropped out of school and spent five years working as a bicycle mechanic and volunteering in a Trauma Centre before ultimately deciding to go to university.

You have to believe in yourself and only trust your own vision and instincts. If Id listened to what other people thought about my work in the first 10 years that I was a writer, I never would have made it to begin with.

You ought to be able to grow up in a place and not have to get the hell out of it when you turn eighteen.

Nothing prepares you for making art except making art. You have to do it to get better.