Most book things now (with a few exceptions) are just built around nice, safe books written for nice and safe book club readers. These are usually the books you see on display at Barnes and Noble. These Internet writers are like literary terrorists to me. They're training as we speak. They're getting ready to invade. They're building an army.

Writing should be like skirts. Long enough to cover what it needs to cover and short enough to maintain interest.

There was a lot of tension between my dad and his mother and brothers. Sometimes when I was over there, I remember thinking, "I don't want to get shot."

I think a pretty good modus operandi is to believe that everything we know is wrong. The stomach will be the key to depression or consciousness or we'll realize ants are smarter than people.

Fellini is a just a province kid. Rome exists for Fellini, not the other way around.

[He Stopped Loving Her Today] is all about the experience of being alive and the thought process of consciousness, and then you have these polemical essay-type things going on for a couple decades now. Some of these music books are where you're going to see an anecdote of a person behaving without some kind of commentary.

Everybody is so sure about everything these days. Just look at your horrible Facebook feed on the most recent tragedy that people are commenting on.