The interesting part about the writing process is that you can never see all the way to the end, not if something is happening over the course of a year and a half, or two years.

When things don't go well, it helps to think of yourself as a genius and the rest of the world as a bunch of idiots.

I think I'm fascinated by the power of religion in our culture. Like a lot of secular, liberal people, I ignored it for a long time. Lately, of course, just from a political perspective, it's impossible to ignore.

It just so happened that for most of my life I've lived in the suburbs.

I have actual dreams of Bruce Springsteen calling me up on stage to wear a bandanna and play rhythm guitar next to Little Steven.

Apparently even the most awful tragedies, and the people they'd ruined, got a little stale after a while.

Once you'd broken through that invisible barrier that separates one person from another, you were connected forever, whether you liked it or not.