During the act of making something, I experience a kind of blissful absence of the self and a loss of time. When I am done, I return to both feeling as restored as if I...

I’m anti-religious. I don’t like people telling me what to do.

At least three times a week, I am overwhelmed with a wave of gratitude to New York City for providing me with a life. Not that my life is so great, although I think it’s...

I have let half-decades elapse between books because books have to be writte and writing is awful, but if you are the type of person who makes things, there is no profit in worrying about...

I had a tumor. But it was great.

I do not go outdoors… As far as I’m concerned, the whole point of living in New York City is indoors. You want greenery? Order the spinach.

Almost any age is better than twenty-two.

My salvation lies in time spent alone with an X-Acto knife and commercial-grade adhesive.

I’m not sure. But that bless-his/her-heart kind of melancholic humor is among my favorite things in the world. I guess it exposes a kind of humanity – or that’s the hope, at least – a...

If you don’t have your experiences in the moment, if you gloss them over with jokes or zoom past them, you end up with curiously dispassionate memories.

Is there some lesson on how to be friends?I think what it means is that central to livinga life that is good is a life that’s forgiving.We’re creatures of contact regardless of whetherwe kiss or...

I find writing extraordinarily difficult and not very pleasurable, though I find having done it very pleasurable. I won’t lie about that.