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.

I felt my whole life was a facsimile of a life.

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.

Never Mind Nirvana is the first novel I’ve read that makes music as important as food, clothing romance — a fresh twist millions will be able to identify with – and the music of Lindquist’s language is a perfect match for the subject. I think he’s the writer to watch in the new millennium.

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.

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

The novel is never really in the first draft. The novel really happens in the revisions.