I took piano lessons and I wanted to play drums when I was six. Luckily enough, my parents let me have a drum kit in my room - which is kind of crazy.
I would make my mom buy me the toy doctor kit.
I started at 5 years old in the kitchen table with my family supporting me. I know where I'm from and I know exactly where I'm going.
I don't care if people even discuss what I did. But if anyone is ever sitting around the kitchen table talking about my career, I hope they say they enjoyed watching me play. That's good enough.
As an object itself, to me, books today are such a rare entity - I want mine to be something where, if left on the kitchen table, a child could pick it up. It can visually tell a story.
It's not very glamorous. People certainly wouldn't think so if they saw me sitting in my woolly socks at the kitchen table. Many times I sit at the typewriter and think, 'Why am I doing this?'
The German public knows me quite well. I have been in their kitchens and living rooms for years.
My wife holds the kite strings that let me go 'weeeeeee', then she reels me back in.
It's always easiest for me as a writer if I know I have a great ending. It can make everything else work. If you don't have a good ending, it's the hardest things in the world to come up with one. I always loved the ending of 'The Kite Runner,' and the scenes that are most faithful to the book are the last few scenes.
I want to try doing sportier things, kite surfing and paddle surfing - I think it would give me that extra confidence.
For me, 'The Kite Runner' became about a guy who's emotionally shut down because he hasn't confronted his past.
For me, true kitsch has nothing to do with irony. It's very honest. It represents what people like, their dreams.
One of the questions that has most bothered me in my reflections on culture is the question of kitsch. Just what is it? When did it begin? And why?
The Rolling Stones have been the best of all possible worlds: they have the lack of pretension and sentimentality associated with the blues, the rawness and toughness of hard rock, and the depth which always makes you feel that they are in the midst of saying something. They have never impressed me as being kitsch.
When I was a child I wanted to be a vet. I'd come home with "lost" kittens and dogs. My mother would tell me to put them back.
Puppies and kittens are both great. Cats and dogs are not for me.
The interesting thing about being a mother is that everyone wants pets, but no one but me cleans the kitty litter.
I'm a responsible soul. But anyone who has the chance to spend time with me can see I'm still 22 years old. I love talking about clothes and guys and shoes and makeup. Plus, I'm obsessed with anything Hello Kitty!
I don't think I'm alarmist. I'm more disappointed by the euphemisms in some instances than outright bigotry. Now, to me, you walk around with a Klan hat on or you've got a swastika on you arm, you just look like a dope, you know what I mean?
A rebel. That was me when I was younger. What was a rebel from New Jersey? A rebel was moving to the Village, not sleeping with top sheets, not eating a hot breakfast in the morning, not having 20 rolls of toilet paper and 10 boxes of Kleenex.
