“I worked probably fewer jobs than most people, or fewer real soul-killing jobs than other people. I’ve been a typist, a typesetter, a keyliner, cappuccino-maker. I think I’ve been pretty lucky.”

When I started I would have called myself an artist but the discipline I chose in art was music and text.

I’m pro-life, in the sense that chaos seems like life to me and order seems like death.

Drugs and drinking affect every family I know, country and city, middle-class and poor.

It occurred to Susan that men were always waiting for something cataclysmic-love or war or a giant asteroid.

Being five-foot-ten at fourteen years old was a little bit scary.

It is interesting to be here and to see that for certain actors they have to live in a way that you think of nobody living anymore except for in small towns. They have such elaborate double lives.

For ‘King Cole’s American Salvage,’ I rode around in the wrecker with a local driver and watched him deal with customers and hook up the cars.

I enjoy shooting. Around where I live, it’s something you do for entertainment once in a while, you go out and shoot targets.

I think it gets uncomfortable when you try to act like you didn’t just tell a joke that bombed.

So maybe nature also works as a metaphor for whatever emotional troubles my characters have to negotiate. I’m interested in my characters as survivors, and maybe that works best when the old-fashioned notion of humans surviving in wilderness is not too far away.

I think by writing about a place with great specificity, you manage to make it universal.

In a regular class I don’t focus on the form, but I think that focus is helpful for brainstorming and coming up with ideas quickly, especially with autobiographical material.

I always felt a weird obligation to be adventurous.

That was a mistake, I guess, going out to California. They have these things called guidance counselors in high school. They drink a lot of herbal tea.

We know that we need to explore desire in fiction – many say that the only way a story exists is that a character feels a strong desire – and nature is the place where creatures act on their desires in the most pure way imaginable.

I’m not much interested in my own self when I write. I’m interested in what I observe out there, what’s going on around me.

We must never forget that it is the private sector – not government – that is the engine of economic opportunity. Businesses, particularly small businesses, flourish and can provide good jobs when government acts as a productive partner.

I try not to be either optimistic or pessimistic. I try not to think about outcomes on that scale. My job, it seems to me, is to wake up every morning and figure out how to cause as much trouble for the fossil fuel industry as I can.

If I run into someone on the street, that’s one thing. But answering mail for a living? I like a job where you can play and act kind of goofy and have some fun.

We need an equal opportunity society, one in which government does not see its job as picking winners and losers. Where do you go if you want special favors?

As far as police go, if officers are really that scared or timid [on the streets], maybe they shouldn’t be police officers. Their job is to protect and serve and they’re supposed to be the bravest of the brave.

The more relaxed you are, the better you are at everything: the better you are with your loved ones, the better you are with your enemies, the better you are at your job, the better you are with yourself.

Even when I was struggling and had horrible day jobs and wanted to be successful but wasn’t finding my way in.

The red-carpet thing of premieres and parties is probably my least favourite part of my job.