I'm trying to make sure that there's comedy as well as sadness. It makes the sadness more memorable.

In general, each form is a relief from the other forms. I can't write a novel after a novel. I just use up all the material each time, and I need to rest.

I do think that just about whenever I am writing, or more accurately, whenever I have written, I feel better and more at peace as a human being. That doesn't mean, unfortunately, that the literary product is any good.

I sort of hate the novel when it doesn't push, restlessly, against the tradition and the traditional.

Capitalism, in the realm of sexuality, I figure, thinks that we behave in specific ways, like a breast is always going to produce a hard-on for some product, whereas the truth is that sexuality is always a continuum, which can be characterized by reversals.

I am in Boston right now, in fact, to do work at the New England Historical Genealogical Library, where I'm trying to finish up tracing my lineage back to the seventeenth century.

God howls with laughter at earthly plans, you know?