Poetry's always dead, you know? You don't realize how good poetry is until 15 years later.

A memoir is a book about some particular thread or theme or moment in a person's life, whereas an autobiography is the entire life.

In fact I thought life was pretty much a losing proposition, and I didn't mind saying so.

I never thought I would write an autobiography, probably because my first novel, Go Now, is really all drawn from my life, even though it's more about the psychology going on.

I decided I wanted out because it was killing me, and I couldnt see where to go with it that wouldnt be fatal.

You're always thinking, "What does that add up to?" You can't really get a handle on it. I was curious. I felt like it would be an interesting challenge for me to write down what I'd seen and done and learned - all the convolutions captured in one item that I could look at and get some grip on what the hell happened.

There are characters in [punk] that do deliberately go as far as they can in certain kind of taboo areas.