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

The things that I have loved have always been those extremes where there has been some kind of apocalypse in the person's life, and they come out unscathed or scathed.

It's like that where these little anecdotes come through, and I guess that's what I like about books like that [He Stopped Loving Her Today]. Fiction now is so experiential.

In memoir, can you really tell the truth about yourself? You're not going to write about your little peccadilloes, like, "I like a finger in my ass during sex." Or whatever it is. You're not going to come out in typical everyday conversation and say that. That's something that's going to be only for a select few.

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

I guess the things I have always loved are from people who were just being themselves. They were doing these things because they couldn't do it any other way. It was for them.

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."