Michael Chabon

I abandoned my second novel completely. Writing 'Kavalier & Clay,' I had several moments of utter collapse. Same with 'The Yiddish Policemen's Union.'

What's going to be hard for me is to try to divorce myself as much as possible from what I wrote. I'll have to approach it simply as raw material and try to craft a film script out of it.

I was thinking, too, of Superman and his fortress of solitude.

My feeling for reality TV isn't ironic, guilty, or apologetic. Reality TV is one of the few remaining modes of popular entertainment in which characterization is permitted as plot.

The Internet is allowing us to get back to what's really more natural, which is that storytelling is a shared thing. It's our natural way to be communal.

It's good to like yourself, and that only comes from hard work, from doing. But vanity is dangerous; it can trip you badly.