I never listen to music when I write.

Because I've lived in one room my entire life, working at the same table that you use to pay bills at and eat at. It's going to be nice to have actual space.

I knew that if I wrote a new book every six months or every year, if I continued to read great books, eventually I would write something worthy of publication. I understood I might be in my forties or my fifties or even my sixties, but I felt confident that it would happen.

I'm like the guy who prepares your taxes or a dentist. I'm very conservative and boring in a lot of ways.

But I can also write in crappy motel rooms, while standing in line, or sitting in the dentist's chair.

I'm always prepared for the worst. I was prepared to have the book come out, sell seven copies, and have to keep working in advertising, so it was just great that it was received so well and by such a huge audience.

I've just finished my next collection, Possible Side Effects, and I'm now working on a collection of holiday stories as well as a memoir about my relationship with my father.

There's never a false note in a Berg novel.

I really look at my childhood as being one giant rusty tuna can that I continue to recycle in many different shapes.

I never listen to music when I write.

And I tend to listen to NPR when I'm not writing.

I think people tend to see the bigger point, which is maybe not fitting in and feeling like you didn't have the childhood that you expected you would have, or that you felt lonely or struggled with drugs and alcohol or just that you were able to achieve your dreams.

I think writers tend to be experience junkies, and I think they also tend to want to be on the outside looking in.

The secret to being a writer is that you have to write. It's not enough to think about writing or to study literature or plan a future life as an author. You really have to lock yourself away, alone, and get to work.

I can't tell you how much I love Target and Costco, that kind of culture, because it's something I never felt a part of. I've always felt like a tourist because I have never fit in anywhere.

My parents had this relationship that was really terrifying. I mean, the level of hatred that they had, and the level of physical abuse - my mother would beat up my father, basically - and I think I was drawn to images on television that were bright and reflective.

But my favorite band is Curbside Life, out of Chicago.

My only ritual is to just sit down and write, write every day.

Marriage is overdone. As long as there are people, people are going to find it interesting.

As a child, I was never drawn toward depraved or extreme situations; I really wanted a normal little childhood. Unfortunately, that's just not what happened.

I love to both give and receive very old books.

I was in advertising for years. That was cushy, you know? It's pretty cushy in a lot of ways, but I hated it.

Reading takes solitude and it takes focus.

Before I'm a writer, I'm definitely a reader and when I read memoir, I really want it to be true.

As a writer, you can't allow yourself the luxury of being discouraged and giving up when you are rejected, either by agents or publishers. You absolutely must plow forward.

I was on the cover of a lot of newspapers. I was on the cover of USA Today for every single day for a month. I was on the masthead, so I tend to get recognized a lot, and in weird places. It's always flattering, and it's always odd. It's always at the worst possible time.

Once I decided to write, to be published, I knew it would happen.

With my own memoirs, they are truthful, and I write everything fully expecting to some day end up televised on Court TV, and I'm fully prepared to be challenged legally on it.

When people meet me, many times they're very surprised because they expect someone who is kind of wacky with seven piercings and very hip and cool and New York City, and I'm not.

I like, though, that people have a hunger to connect with other people. They're desperate to know that you're not lying to them or misleading them.

My attraction had been immediate and profound. And it had nothing to do with the way he looked. My attraction was to what resided between his lines.

Red hair is great. Its rare and therefore superior.

Handsome people are always interesting to watch. But a handsome person in crisis is riveting.

You need to grab your dream out of the sky like it's a kite and pinch the string through your fingers until you reach the spool.

The line between normal and crazy seemed impossibly thin. A person would have to be an expert tightrope walker in order not to fall.

Red hair is great. It's rare, and therefore superior.

To nobody's surprise, steroid use is common among gay men. When you combine a love for men with a love for drama, you end up with a guy on steroids.

Thanksgiving was nothing more than a pilgrim-created obstacle in the way of Christmas; a dead bird in the street that forced a brief detour.

The most valuable moments and experiences that life has to offer are found only along its most treacherous paths.

When you use music to worship you are not attempting to entertain.

Pop music, disco music, and heavy metal music is about shutting out the tensions of life, putting it away.

When I did the record, I was coming off a time when my contract had been sold and the music industry had changed a lot. I didn't understand how to make records for big labels. I was waiting for a new kind of record label to emerge.

You've got to realize. In the western world, regardless of what color you are, what title the music is, it's all played by the same notes.

Don't make music for some vast, unseen audience or market or ratings share or even for something as tangible as money. Though it's crucial to make a living, that shouldn't be your inspiration. Do it for yourself.

Whether I'm doing music or I'm walking down the street or I'm in a record store buying a record or I walk into a comic store and I'm buying comics or having a drink with my friends, it's the same me.

When rock came along the lyrics and melodies became less important and it bothered me to think that perhaps they might not regain the value they have to music - they are music.

I want to promote poetry to the point where you got all the baldhead kids running around doing poetry, getting the music out of the way and having only words, the spoken word, and then see what happens.

There is no music that can't be used politically, but the motives behind the creation of that music can be non-political.

The kind of music or the kind of arrangements that I do, the kind of musicians I choose, is just what I like to hear.