I love working with genre. And to me, the Victorian novel is the flourishing ancestor I'm always trying to access when I write.

When I had my first child, I didn't write for a year, and I felt when I tried to start again I might actually not be able to do it anymore. I really could not do it well, and I felt out of sorts with it.

In a way, I started 'Goon Squad' not even realizing I was writing a book. I thought I was just writing a few stories to stall before starting this other book that I wanted to write - or thought I wanted to write: I still haven't written it.

I should say, I don't write about myself or my life. So for me, in fiction, it's always been about what I can dream up, that feels far away from me.

For me, New York is about anonymity; that's the draw. It's not at all about other people in my business being nearby. It's that I can get on the subway and eavesdrop on conversations that I would never have access to otherwise. That's why I stay. That's why I could never leave.

I can't even imagine writing nonfiction by hand. I think if I didn't have a computer, I just couldn't do it. Maybe it's a brain-section issue.

Music makes time fall away like almost nothing else. You hear a song from another moment of your life, and it really is like you're still there.

As a journalist, I have wanted very much to find a way to write about the music industry, and it's been frustrating to me that that's never worked out.

I was not a punk rocker, absolutely not, but I certainly knew quite a lot of them, and I definitely went to the Mab - it was raw, interesting intense scene, so I was very drawn to it, but I was a total outsider.

If I'm doing something I know I can pull off, then that's not the book I should be writing.