Some of the food in Liquor is food I've really eaten filtered through a veil of fiction.

New Orleans cuisine is Creole rather than Cajun.

My childhood may have been more demented than most, because I learned to read very early and was allowed to read whatever I wanted.

Celebrities, even insignificant ones like me, are created to be abused by the Great Unwashed.

Young writers shouldn't be afraid of striving to emulate their favorites. It's a good way to learn, as long as you move on from it and don't publish too many of the results.

And I can't think of a reason I'd ever use a pseudonym, as I wouldn't want to publish something that I didn't like enough to put my name on it.

In high school I was the dog, always, and I never have felt comfortable or right in my body, and part of my whole exhibitionist thing has probably been a way of testing to see whether or not I really was this repulsive creature that I felt like for so long.