Your prospective employer, or the person you have a crush on, or the person you want to talk to. You're judging yourself, you know, thinking about your listener. You're not thinking about what you're saying. And that same thing happens when you write.

I have this great fear of Mexico City. I won't go to Mexico City unless someone meets me at the airport and is with me. I just feel very vulnerable there.

One press account said I was an overnight success. I thought that was the longest night I've ever spent.

You know that you wouldn't take a baby on a plane without diapers, so when you leave your house, take care of you, like you would a baby. Don't leave your house without packing some healthy things.

I am one who leaves the table like a man, without putting back the chair or picking up the plate

I don't want to blame anybody, but I just want to tell you that the process of writing is antisocial, so on the days that you have something really important to write, go from lying down directly to your notepad or your computer. Do not talk.

[Jorge Luis Borges] had short stories, and I was trying to learn how to write short stories, and then he had these things in the middle that were like fables, and I loved hearing fables.