“It is my job to create universes, as the basis of one novel after another. And I have to build them in such a way that they do not fall apart two days later.Or at least that's what my editors hope.However, I will reveal a secret to you:I like to build universes which do fall apart. I like to see them unglued, and I like to see how how the characters in the novel cope with this problem.I have a scret love of chaos. There should be more of it.”

“So, what do you do when you know you have two days to live? Eat an entire Bitter Chocolate Death cake all by myself. Reread my favorite novel. Buy eight dozen roses from the best florist in town--the super expensive ones, the ones that smell like roses rather than merely looking like them--and put them all over my apartment. Take a good long look at everyone I love.”

“One way or another, I have wound up destroying what I've loved. I've seen my dreams fall apart just when I seemed to achieve them. I always thought that was just the way life was. My life and everybody else's.”

“I would like to carve my novel in a piece of wood. My characters—I would like to have them heavier, more three-dimensional ... My characters have a profession, have characteristics; you know their age, their family situation, and everything. But I try to make each one of those characters heavy, like a statue, and to be the brother of everybody in the world.”

“That's what alcoholics do. It's in their job description: fall apart and then keep falling apart.”

“I knew I was having a panic attack. I hadn't had one in a while, though, and I'd forgotton how they made everything like it- and I- was going to fall apart. How they reminded me of how trapped I was.”