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I get drunk writing words. I don't drink or do drugs, but I get so carried away with writing that I get inebriated from it.

Writing is just something I've always done. It's just kind of the reality of who I am.

I write as if I were drunk. It is a process of intuition rather than placing myself above my story like a puppeteer pulling strings. For me, it's a scary, chaotic process over which I have little control. Words demand other words, characters resist me.

I don't like writing with real people in mind.

If we lose sight of the fact that writing is entertainment, then writing is doomed.

If you make your living writing, and you can't write anything, it's over. It's very frightening.

Reality continues to ruin my life.

I do try to write in ways that reflect reality, and I think that reality is rarely simple.

It isn't as if a writer merely records life as it unfurls. Reality does not automatically transcribe as literature; real people are not shapely, compelling characters to be harvested. Charming facts and sharp observations rarely slide seamlessly into whatever narrative is at hand.

Writing a novel is one of those modern rites of passage, I think, that lead us from an innocent world of contentment, drunkenness, and good humor, to a state of chronic edginess and the perpetual scanning of bank statements.