I've Always Been Entranced With Theater.

People Really Want To Believe That There Is No Fiction. I Think They Find It Much Easier To Imagine That Novelists Are Writing Memoirs, Writing About Their Lives, Because It's Difficult To Conceive That There's A Great Imaginary Life In Which You Can Participate.

Stand-up Comedy Had An Interesting Effect On Me In Terms Of How I Started To Think About Constructing Things, Because I Really Loved The Interstices, The Linkages, Or Lack Thereof.

I Have An Enduring, Very Robust Infatuation With Dictators. I Have An Infatuation With Stalin, Mao, And Mussolini. In The Paris Review Interview I Did (in 2013), I Said My Next Book, This One, Was Going To Be About Mussolini. I Wound Up Only Having A Mussolini Cameo In The Book.

You Are Fiercely Heterosexual And Well-formed, And It's No One's Business That You've Shrunk Your Parents And Keep Them In A Terranium, But You Have A Gatling Gun For A Mouth, And If That's A Diary You're Producing From Your Cleavage, I'm Leaving.

My Work Generally Tends To Be An All-out, 360-degree Subversive Take On Everything, Most Of All My Own Notion Of Myself As A Son, Father, Husband, Human Being And Male In This Culture.