Louis C. K.

If you're a cartoon character or most TV characters, sure, you'll fight, because the punches are juicy-sounding and they don't leave marks. But in real life, if somebody punches you in the eye, it doesn't make any noise and your eye is swollen for, like, six months. It's a nightmare to get punched in the eye.

I like pressure. Pressure doesn't make me crack. It's enabling. I eat pressure, and there might be times when I get a bad feeling in my gut that this might be too much, but you feel pressure when you're not doing something, you know?

Some things I think are very conservative, or very liberal. I think when someone falls into one category for everything, I'm very suspicious. It doesn't make sense to me that you'd have the same solution to every issue.

Writing novels is largely about endurance and patience. I take a lot of breaks, hit walls, and go do something else while I think things through. But I do it every day, and I try to treat it as a job, something that is not dictated by whimsy or muses.