I really wanted to be a model when I was little. I loved photography, and I loved being on camera. But I was short and chubby, so I couldn't. Anyway, being an artist is way more interesting than just being a model because it's about you and what you want to be. You're not being treated like a clothes hanger.

All writing is in fact cut-ups. A collage of words read heard overheard. What else?

All great composers of the past spent most of their time studying. Feeling alone won't do the job. A man also needs technique.

It is Ireland's sacred duty to send over, every few years, a playwright to save the English theater from inarticulate glumness.

Fiction becomes a weird way to countenance yourself and to tell the truth instead of being a way to escape yourself or present yourself in a way you figure you will be maximally likable.

The opportunity to create a small world between two pieces of cardboard, where time exists yet stands still, where people talk and I tell them what to say, is exciting and rewarding.