One of the strategies for doing first-person is to make the narrator very knowing, so that the reader is with somebody who has a take on everything they observe.

I guess I'm not really fond of just chit-chatting. I want to learn something and have an experience.

For me, truth cracks open in the places where things do not cohere. That's how life is.

People who are harder to love pose a challenge, and the challenge makes them easier to love. You're driven to love them. People who want their love easy don't really want love.

I think any time you deal with humans and the way they exploit one another and cause pain you are in the realm of politics, on some level.

There is no real appeal for me in an image of a woman on a motorcycle.

I was a child but weirdly uninhibited. I talked to people and inserted myself in all kinds of absurd situations. I think some of those life experiences influenced me in terms of the main character of The Flamethrowers. But for the parts where the community of artists are speaking above her level of participation, that probably came more out of my experience of being in New York in the '90s as an adult.