When you put so much effort to forget someone, the effort itself becomes a memory. Then you have to forget the forgetting, and that too is memorable.

I never thought that it would take me so long to do something. I thought everything was temporary and sometimes the best thing you have working in your favor is a bad sense of time. In order to sit down and write a book that takes six years you have to have a screwed up sense of time because that's too daunting. No one is going to pick up a pen and a piece of paper and say, "Okay, six years, here we go."

I believe everything is autobiographical. If it's not strictly about you, it's your peers, your obsessions, things that make you angry, or things that you've been watching or obsessing about. Preoccupying you for reasons you don't necessarily know, but it's about you. It says a lot about you. It's like when someone tells you their dream and you sit there going, "Do you realize how much you're revealing about yourself right now?" It's kind of embarrassing.

Negotiating with memories isn't easy: how to choose between those panting to be told, those still ripening, those already shriveling, and those destined to be mangled by language and come out pulverized?

When we finished the kiss she said laughing, I can taste your loneliness - it tastes like vinegar. That annoyed me. Everyone knows loneliness tastes like cold potato soup.

I actually went into writing first to supplement my income, which was a strange thing to do and actually failed.

Once a year I try writing a poem, usually because I've read some poetry that amazed me and I want to do that.