“I think several generations of my family had novels in the drawer. You...” — Garth Risk Hallberg Quote

I think several generations of my family had novels in the drawer. You know the montage in 'The Royal Tenenbaums' where each character has produced some sort of minor work? It was like having a magician in the household.

I'm trying to focus on my job as I see it, which is to write the next thing and to remain, to the degree that I ever was, a noticer.

I always thought I was going to be a great poet, and go and live in New York, where the great poets lived - you know, where Whitman had walked the streets.

I'd been coming to New York for weekends since I was 17, and after 9/11, I started making these trips more frequently, just to make contact with the city.

I began photographing in 1946. Before that, I was a painter and drawer, with my mother and father's support. They were a bit pissed when I went into photography. They thought photographers were guys who took pictures at weddings.

I never really thought we'd fitted into the cross-over drawer. But I think the real Sugar Ray fans did like us because we always had variety and because we experimented a lot.

My dad was working in Manhattan during 9/11 and saw it happening. He took a piece of rubble, and now he keeps it in a drawer like a souvenir.

For Mothers Day, we always gave mom a perfume and on Fathers Day, we gave dad a pen. Funnily, every year, we used to steal it from their drawer and give it back every year.