“Any character that can't be kept straight, to me, isn't a character wh...” — Garth Risk Hallberg Quote

Any character that can't be kept straight, to me, isn't a character who should be in the book - you know, anyone not vivid enough to have a claim on my attention.

I associated excellence in writing with New York City.

I respect Billy Joel, but I'm not a guy who's gonna sit down and listen to the entire 'Essential Billy Joel.'

At 14 and 15, I was sort of my town's resident beatnik.

Sure, 'Les Miserables' can be melodramatic. And seeing the musical instead of reading the novel will save you some time and spare you the long part where Hugo goes on and on about the Parisian sewer system. But I would hate for the novel to lose that.

I dislike pastiche; it attracts attention to the language only.

The first outbreak of America's 11-year skyjacking epidemic occurred in the summer of 1961, when four planes were seized in the nation's airspace. The last of these incidents, involving 16-year-old Cody Bearden and his father, Leon, is the one that finally forced the federal government to pay attention to the escalating crisis.

I have a short attention span. I couldn't stay doing the same thing for 30 years.

Drag is great way to get people to pay attention to me, but it's a difficult way to get people to take me seriously as a musician. So it's a weird Catch-22. It's like a gimmick that gets them to pay attention, but when they see my image, they're like, 'There's no way this is going to have any legitimacy to it.'