I'm a novelist. I think fiction is important or I wouldn't be doing it, but most of it's bad.

Sometimes when we think we’re protecting ourselves, we’re really hurting ourselves. And sometimes the people around us too.

Your life could be taken from you at any moment. Between AIDS and the violence against gay people that was so prevalent back then, you really didn't feel like you were living in the United States of America, in a first world country. You had a sense that life was a precious commodity you had to fight to keep.

One night I had a dream and woke up and wrote down the dream. That was my first short story. The dream was a kind of fantasy of me getting revenge on my father.

Art is only great if it's uncodifiable. If art isn't scaring you, if it's not making you upset, then I don't think it's actually doing anything.

I came out after safe sex was invented and I always practiced safe sex. Except for when I lost my virginity.

Most contemporary fiction sucks. It's intellectually dishonest, often morally dishonest. It's cheap and easy. It pretends to be deep but is really quite shallow.

Writing fiction is fundamentally an irrational act.

Your past comes with you no matter where you go.

Don't come to New York until you've finished a book. It's too expensive. You'll never write anything. You'll spend all your time working to pay the rent.

We had the fun of being outlaws. But there's a whole generation now coming up with new gender identities. For this generation of kids who don't think that being gay is anything special, they might be more interesting than any of us.

It's nice to have something you think separates you from the mainstream and gives you perspective on that, but it can become very limiting at the same time if it's something you use to artificially define yourself.