The late Seventies was the death of the manufacturing age in the United States. It was also a time when the Pictures Generation artists were getting started. They co-opted the language of advertising. The factory disappeared, and weirdly, so did the art object - it was the age of making gestures, not objects.

Flamethrowers have been used by many armies in many wars, including by American Marines in Korea and Vietnam. They cause horrific deaths and are thus a serious public-relations liability. The U.S. military apparently phased them out in 1978.

I'm very interested in the idea of a large group of people who come together quite suddenly, but not illogically, for reasons that could not have been anticipated.

I have to arrange my life very carefully. I need eight hours' sleep to work.

The social dimension of the art world is fascinating to me, but I also want to entertain the reader, so I will let a character say something funny.

I grew up in Oregon, and then I lived in San Francisco and New York.

I don't really know what the Great American Novel is. I like the idea that there could be one now, and I wouldn't object if someone thought it was mine, but I don't claim to have written that - I just wrote my book.

I'm not the kind of person who would want to go into a studio and manage other people and listen to the phone ringing. That's alien to me.

I don't have any outside view of myself, and if I did, I would probably be creatively inhibited. I just write in the way that I write.

For me, art is not 'brooding.' It comes from someplace that is more fun and that has a kind of electricity to it.