Brownstein's is a fresh and jaunty voice, with a jazz snap all his own.

I'm writing what I want to write. But it's almost an act of rebellion on my part. Because as a person, I've always wanted to be very likeable, and I think that's a horrible thing, particularly for women. You're always like, "Oh, I hope I didn't hurt anyone's feelings. I hope they like me!" And that's just so stupid.

I don't want my novel to be like Madame Bovary, finely crafted with the life edited out of it. I want my novel to be like a friend telling me a story -- so we go off on thoughts; that's the way it is.

I feel like I sort of missed the eighties. At the time, we didn’t know we were having fun, which is probably the way it always is.

Crimes, sins, nightmares, hunks of hair: it was surprising how many of them has something to dispose of. The more I charged, the easier it was for them to breathe freely once more.

Brownstein's is a fresh and jaunty voice, with a jazz snap all his own.

On bad days, I think I'd like to be a plastic surgeon who goes to Third World countries and operates on children in villages with airlifts, and then I think, 'Yeah, right, I'm going to go back to undergraduate school and take all the biology I missed and then go to medical school.' No. No.