We all live in a universe in which we're either asked to or are forced to accept certain premises about our employment without having the opportunity to verify them.

I'm for everyone having the opportunity to accept a $150,000 bribe.

I'm concerned, as I guess all middle-aged people are, about the younger generations' level of literacy.

I live in Greenwich Village in New York City, but I rarely write at home, where there's too much else to do.

There's always something at least a little smug about self-reference - magazine articles about idealistic journalists, TV shows about TV actors, ironic films within ironic-er films: all this meta-media populated by thinly disguised characters making oblique inside jokes.

A writer can spend a decade working obsessively on a novel, but in the commerce of publishing, many of the most important decisions about any book will be made based on very short pitches - from literary agent to editor to sales rep to bookstore buyer to a potential reader standing in the bookstore, asking, 'What's it about?'