I’m prone to overexplaining things –- when my own understanding of them is shaky. The better I know something, the shorter my prose.

I’m too quick to jump to a negative conclusion. For example, if I’ve had a book come out recently and I’m with a friend who doesn’t mention it, instead of thinking, “This person hasn’t mentioned my book because they’re busy and haven’t had time to purchase it, much less read it, and that doesn’t mean that they don’t like me,” I will go to, “This person doesn’t care about me,” which is such a terrible, self-centered way to think. People really are busy and their world doesn’t stop just because I’ve published a novel.

Jumping to conclusions. We all create hypotheses in undisciplined fashion, and then you have to go back and be intellectually disciplined.

I’ve a deplorable tendency to become entrenched in my own prejudices: If I dislike an artist, an art form, or an idea (jazz, ballet, certain kinds of fiction) it is extremely difficult to get me to change my mind, and all evidence presented to the contrary will be discarded and very likely mocked. Of course, nobody suffers but me.

I wrote a play called Knuckle in 1974, which opened to hostile reviews during the three-day week.

Never take advice from anyone with no investment in the outcome.

I don't think you should do the serious stuff, you're not cut out for it.

you have no idea where your power, if you have any power, comes from and then, when it vanishes, you have no idea why it’s vanished.

I get to airports ridiculously early. It’s an uncontrollable urge.

I’ve been reading – and fighting – Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts; feeling admiration and anger in equal parts.