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" It's hard to leave New York: this is where my friends are, my parents are. It is so vital. The whole world seems to look to New York. "

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" There's no shortage of material in life. "

" I don't like rides. I take everything in life quite literally, and so I genuinely feel terrified on rides and liable to vomit at any moment, and I hate to vomit even more than I fear rides. "

" There are so many talented young writers named Jonathan, with whom by comparison I suffer terribly. "

" I am always the source of the worst rumors about myself. "

" I don't like to publicly acknowledge being a Jew. "

" I am part of a vast generation of people who perpetually live as if they just graduated from college. "

" I didn't play or like a lot of board games as a child. I liked playing with my G.I. Joes and making up adventures for them. "

" For me, the past is dead. Can't go back. "

" To write about a place, you have to live there. "

" A lot of writing is a form of seeing - putting down what you see in terms of action and landscape. "

" I need to stay in the present and use that new-age mantra: 'I'm okay right now.' But I worry about all the things I'm failing at every moment. "

" It's hard for me to think of writing a novel, because it takes so long. "

" A lot of writers, probably because they're sensitive, which makes them want to be writers, have fears about their masculinity, so they overcompensate by having an interest in boxing and tough-guy things. "

" I don't mind being ridiculed - well, I guess I would mind a little, but it would only last a few minutes - it's all very ephemeral; it doesn't really matter what people think of me. "

" As a child, I wanted to be an athlete, a professional tennis player or something like that. "

" Having a show get canceled is like, 'Oh, you have caviar between your teeth,' you know what I mean? Because you had a show in the first place. "

" The reason it's hard for me to tweet is I don't want to pronounce anything, and Twitter is for pronouncing. "

" Even when I was living below the poverty line as a novelist, I was still living better than 99.5% of the human population of the world. But in my little, soft realm of trying to amuse a few dozen middle-class people with my books and articles, I did struggle to survive in my own way. "

" Mostly I have to try to censor myself so as not to write things that will hurt other people, or that will go too far. "

" I've really never written about my relationships, or things like that. I wouldn't want to divulge things that were too private. "

" I drink coffee. Without coffee, I probably couldn't write. "

" I don't laugh that much, but I do like humorous books, and I like to entertain readers that way. "

" When I was in college, I had the good fortune to have Joyce Carol Oates as my writing teacher. She told me that I could take an aspect of myself, and from that one bit of personality, I can create a character. This is what I have done, particularly in my novels. "

" For me, books have always been a way to feel less alone while being alone. Perhaps if I was depressed and isolated, just communicating with these authors through their sentences helped me. "

" I grew up in northern New Jersey - the banlieue of New York - and I now live in Brooklyn. I am separated from my parents by about 50 miles, but really there is almost no distance between us. I speak to them nearly every day. "

" Now, all writing - all the arts - are a form of 'Pay attention to me,' but there's also the flip side. Like, I want to give something. Let me entertain you, let me amuse you, let me try to please you with this thing I've made. And then pay attention to me. "

" Something has happened where you almost never grow up in America. Maybe it's the greater wealth. "

" No, I'm not very productive at all. I'm probably like an animal. I mean, great animals in the ocean feed all the time. I'm someone who procrastinates, worries, for most of a month, and then I'll have a flurry of manic productivity with a sense of great urgency and fear for, like, two days. "

" I'm actually much more shy and self-conscious than people's perception of me. "

" I don't have ADD, but I only like to pay attention to the things I like to pay attention to, and things like getting a TV and getting the cable working are beyond me, and so I let such things lapse, sometimes for years. This applies to keeping my apartment clean. "