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Generally, if you preface an interview request with, 'I'm an author writing a book,' for some reason, that seems to open a lot of doors.

For years, I was watching other people have so much fun playing out their version of authorship, like Louis C.K. and Larry David. As I watched them do their thing, I began to pine for the days when I had a lot less expected of me and, often, a lot more creative freedom. The courage that those guys have is always captivating to me.

I never liked the idea of giving interviews. One says many things, but when they are published, they become shortened, condensed. The ideas lose their meaning.

Before I published anything, I dreamed of publication, but I didn't actually write for it. I imagined that writing for an audience was something for fancier people. I aspired, but mostly I wrote for myself. I wrote because it made me happy.

I have been writing since I was about 20, and at first I wrote in secret and never showed anybody. I was very concerned about making a living, so I conducted.

I had never really thought of myself as a writer; any writing I had done was just to give myself something to draw.

I believe it is important to speak to your readers in person... to enable people to have a whole picture of me; I have to both write and speak. I view my role as writer and also as oral communicator.

I always felt journalists had a very clear idea of what they wanted to write about me before the interview began.

I have never written for an audience. On the other hand I do not write merely to please myself.

Lots of people want to have written; they don't want to write. In other words, they want to see their name on the front cover of a book and their grinning picture on the back. But this is what comes at the end of a job, not at the beginning.