I'm sure there are people who survive tragedy without humor but I've never met any of them. Nor would I be particularly interested in writing about them if I did meet them.

When I look at a lot of older stuff that I've written I think one sign of amateur humor writing is when you see people trying too hard.

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.

Writing a song is much like being an author. Yes we all have tools to write (everyone has a brain I hope!) but that doesn't all of a sudden make us best selling authors.

I hope to continue writing. I hope to continue teaching.

I don't remember deciding to become a writer. You decide to become a dentist or a postman. For me writing is like being gay. You finally admit that this is who you are you come out and hope that no one runs away.

If someone decides to be a musician now it means because there is no hope of money at the end of it it means they really want to be a musician. And if someone is writing now there is no hope for money at the end of it.

You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.

I've tried to reduce profanity but I reduced so much profanity when writing the book that I'm afraid not much could come out. Perhaps we will have to consider it simply as a profane book and hope that the next book will be less profane or perhaps more sacred.

But yeah I'm really happy when I'm writing. When I'm being creative and when I have something that I can put down. You know if you go out and you overhear a conversation or you have a thought you have a receptacle to go home and say 'Oh this would be great in this script.' Your antenna's out in a different way and I love that time.

I made a real specific decision when I came out of school and most artists were writing about home - if you were a woman you were writing about being a woman - and I decided not to do that write about what you know. That's not what I do. I went as far away from home as possible in terms of the development of my imagination.

I think the advent of the Internet gave us all a big boost because by the time the Internet became mainstream and you could get it in your home a lot of us were used to dealing in fan culture writing to magazines or anything at the back of comic books.

I got a scholarship to Seattle University and I was writing arrangements for singers and everybody. But the music course was too dry and I really wanted to get away from home.

The best thing that ever happened to me is that nothing happened in writing. I ended up working for engineering companies and that's where I found my material in the everyday struggle between capitalism and grace. Being broke and tired you don't come home your best self.

I like to think of myself at home in the armchair writing smoking and occasionally wandering down the shop.

There's a continuity between what I care about in any form: I care about it in my music in article-writing in how I dress in how I live in my relationships in how I navigate paparazzi how I decorate my home. There's such a continuity between everything that I don't really care what form it shows up in.

I can remember being home from school with tonsillitis and writing stories in bed to pass the time.