Someone peeled back the surface of our town, and the whole country saw what was underneath. By Easter 1980 we were creepier than Amityville.

Thinking back, I can almost feel the air in the commons that day, the things eddying around us. We were breathing in violence and desperation and other people’s hallucinations, but it was all invisible to us then. Like the fluoride in the water or the radiation from Brookhaven, the DDT and the valium and the Strontium 90. All the heavy atoms and alkaloid molecules that shape us and then break us apart.

We have no suburbs - we're an island.

I'm proud of where I'm from. I'm proud of Long Island.

Gleason used to rack balls for me when he was a kid in Brooklyn and in Long Island.

There are so many different worlds in Long Island. That's why it's so fascinating. Between Great Neck and Montauk, there are 10,000 worlds.