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

Nothing beats novel writing because it's complete expression of you. You just control everything. Not even a movie director has that level of control.

She told her therapist it reminded her of coming home the summer after her freshman year at Rutgers, stepping back into the warm bath of family and friends, loving it for a week or two, and then feeling trapped, dying to return to school, missing her roommates and her cute new boyfriend, the classes and the parties and the giggly talks before bed, understanding for the first time that that was her real life now, that this, despite everything she'd ever loved about it, was finished for good.

From a distance, it makes perfect sense that the people and the things you think will save you are the very ones that have the power to disappoint you most bitterly, but up close it can hit you as a bewildering surprise.

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 no longer believe that just about everything is funny, if viewed from the proper angle.

I used to describe myself as a comic novelist, but my concerns seem to have darkened over the past few years.