I Was Really Not A Good Student,

A Writer Or Any Suffering Artist-to-be Is Just An Instrument Too Finely Set To The Human Condition [...]

A Lot Of The Ways Of Advertising A Book - The Cover, Whether Somebody Sees It On A Subway Or Sees It In A Bookstore - Those Things Are Going To Rapidly Diminish As We Move To An Electronic Model.

I Reveled In The Smallness, The Coziness Of An Upstairs Bedroom In A Traditional American Cape Cod House The Half-floor That Forces You To Duck, To Feel Small And Naive Again, Ready For Anything, Dying For Love, Your Body A Chimney Filled With Odd, Black Smoke. These Square, Squat, Awkward Rooms Are Like A Fifty-square-foot Paean To Teenage-hood, To Ripeness, To The First And Last Taste Of Youth.

Every Returning New Yorker Asks The Question: Is This Still My City? I Have A Ready Answer, Cloaked In Obstinate Despair: It Is. And If It's Not, I Will Love It All The More. I Will Love It To The Point Where It Becomes Mine Again.

Usually, With A Novel, You Start With No Idea What To Do Because Your Job Is To Create Convincing Characters And Then They Just Run Around Getting Crazy. The Problem With Writing A Memoir, Obviously, Is You Can't Do That Because You Sort Of Know What's Going To Happen. Because You're The Character.