Occupy Wall Street means making Wall Street and the corporate power elite understand that the people affected by the binge of unregulated greed are not going away, and they are not going to give up.

Your memories from your early childhood seem to have such purchase on your emotions. They are so concrete.

All roads lead to Wall Street, but we feel the effects of Wall Street on every street corner. Certainly in Syracuse, N.Y., where I live.

The issue isn't, Am I good enough? No. The issue is, Do I not have any other choice? Will and desire don't matter. Ability doesn't matter. Need is the only thing that matters.

The novel is about, for me, sustained and organized looking. I do think that people have a hunger for a sustained engagement, that concentration that the book can offer.

I am always trying to do something new and different. The first step is curiosity, questions. You pay attention to what fascinates you. If you can't shake it, there is something there.

In order to be a living, breathing thing, a novel has to be failed in some kind of way. Or at least that's how I keep writing them.

I have to say that movies have as much impact on me as music. And that I learned as much about narrative from movies as I did from reading novels, how to arrange stories, how to juxtapose things.

A good novel should be deeply unsettling - its satisfactions should come from its authenticity and its formal coherence. We must feel something crucial is at stake.

Yes, I did try acting when I was in high school and I was terrible at it. So I definitely have had the experience of being bad at artistic endeavor.

I am a great procrastinator. When the writing is going really well, the laundry piles up.

I will love you forever" swears the poet. I find this easy to swear too. "I will love you at 4:15 pm next Tuesday" - Is that still as easy?

What is is plenty, but more is never enough.

PU'RIST: one superstitiously nice in the use of words.

All art is dependent on technology because it's a human endeavour, so even when you're using charcoal on a wall or designed the proscenium arch, that's technology.

Let heart and voice, like bells of silver, ring, the comfort that this day doth bring.

History is the myth, the true myth, of man's fall made manifest in time.

Knowledge itself is never dangerous, it is how that knowledge is used that is dangerous

When I heard Puerto Ricans in New York City, it sounded very strange. And the first time I heard someone from Spain, I thought they had a speech impediment!

Mere allocation of huge sums of money for quality will not bring quality.

I've always been transparent in who I am as a person.