Pleasure, I remind myself, is inseparable from its lawfully wedded mate, pain.

Work ethic and this determination is all part of escaping the depressive side. Of course I'm manic depressive, maybe not to the degree that Exley was, but I think all writers are. There are highs and lows. Look at David Foster Wallace.

Especially students. I love to turn them on to a story. Some of them have to go see me as an assignment, like kids from the schools in New York will go to the Y. I want them to know why I love this and why they should too.

I'm a product of state schools. I had a working-class family. We had no books. I was the first to go to college. But I didn't really think about it, or about making money. I was just going to be an artist, and I've been fortunate. I've never had to work for anybody nor have I had to write for money. Maybe that's another reason that I've been able to be productive. I haven't had to use my writing to make a living.

I've always been a huge fan of theatre and performance. The idea of just the human voice and just this night. Live music is the same. They're doing it for you right now. It's an amazing thing. And if you perform a story properly, it can be a transporting, too.

The hardest part is always the middle of anything because at that point, on some unconscious level, you have to figure out what it's about and why you're doing it and what it means. You don't know that in the beginning.

There's a kind of mystery to our being and from my point of view, regarding my own parents and their parents, I'd as soon let it lie than find out who my mother's father was.