Writing is a way of living. It doesn't quite matter that there are too many books for the number of readers in the world to read them. It's a way of being alive, for the writer.

The kids I knew growing up who worked on bikes all loved the smell of gas. It is the liquid agent for speed.

When I see things in the world that leap out at me, I want to make use of them in fiction. Maybe every writer does that. It just depends on what you claim or appropriate as yours.

I shy away from plot structure that depends on the characters behaving in ways that are going to eventually be explained by their childhood, or by some recent trauma or event. People are incredibly complicated. Who knows why they are the way they are?

My natural orientation has never been among a community of writers, really. For some reason my social world has always been in the art world.

I am not a sun person at all. I think it's a cancerous poison and I don't want it touching me.

The VW doesn’t make you think of Hitler and genocide. It’s a breast on wheels, a puffy little dream.