I believe that we can access stories, and voices from those around us, more easily often than from our own imperfect memories.

Susan Rebecca White has a keen sense for how her characters talk and think. An impressive debut.

Of course I'd sometimes have characters from downstate living upstate, but it took a while for me to start writing about where I grew up.

When I teach, I try to assign writers from whom I can learn.

I'll write about California someday, I imagine, but I don't know when.

I think it's probably better to make a region your own, and then maybe you can go somewhere else, but a lot of great writers have stuck to one region.

I think narrators expect a high level of intimacy with their readers, and vice versa.

I tend to listen to my friends and family empathetically, and I try to help work through their problems from the inside. I try to adopt their thinking.

I think the voice can carry a story.

I'm always relearning things I thought I'd learned for good a while back.

I'm suspicious of epiphanies, because they so rarely last.

The only people who have no bad tendencies are dead.

Pretend that every single person you meet has a sign around his or her neck that says, 'Make me feel important.' Not only will you succeed in sales, you will succeed in life.

You can always think of something like the Xbox 360 as a super set-top box that can do everything the set-top box does, but then have the graphics to do the games as well.

It is more comfortable to feel that we are a slight improvement on a monkey than such a fallin' off from the angels.

It's hard to get along with people. As much as you try to like them and accept them as individuals, it becomes difficult because they keep getting out of line and wasting your time.

The only goal is in the process. The process is the thing…with little flashes of light here and there. Those are the gigs, those are the live shows. But it's the life in between—that's all I got.

Johnny Vassilaros is the man who has created the finest cup of coffee ever served in the city of New York.

When I met Steve Kaufman, I thought he was Gene Simmons, but what an artist talent he is. He will be an art force in the art world to deal with.

With some songs, I have written narratives or I've tried to carry it through, but generally the things that were more genius, as far as I was concerned, were not that.

Our greatest battle is to become ourselves, in the face of adversity.