A screenwriter heard me read from my novel 'The Wishbones' when it was still in progress and mentioned me to some producers in Hollywood. They called, and I told them I had a novel in my drawer about a high school election that goes haywire. They asked to take a look, and my life changed pretty dramatically as a result.

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

I was writing very early, like I was involved in our high school literary magazine, which was called 'Pariah.' The football team was the Bears, and the literary magazine was 'Pariah.' It was great. It was definitely a real sub-culture. But I wrote stories for them.

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

I was a garbage man in New Jersey in summers during college at Yale. Everybody else got to go to Switzerland and I got to go to the dump.

As for writing about temptation, there's no drama without temptation, and no novel without drama.

There's not some finite amount of pain inside us. Our bodies and minds just keep manufacturing more of it.