“When I’m 37 years old, I won’t be bald. I won’t wear white robes with red intestines in the pocket.”

I was a bartender for the last five years. People tend to think that’s pretty interesting, but after a while it just gets depressing.

“The Insurrection Act of 1807 was enacted in silence. It has no legislative history.”

Why do you write? No one ever asks me this but I repeat this every morning while taking a walk in my neighborhood. I write to save nature and reduce animal suffering.

While the story isn’t autobiographical, it is set in the landscape of my childhood. The summers were humid, gluey and close. Most everywhere was without central air conditioning.

After reading Donna Tartt’s The Secret History my last year of high school, I wanted to run off to Vermont to befriend a clique of elitist classics students and participate in modern-day Bacchic rites.