Quotes from Christopher Bollen

It's always surprised me that mainstream America had the good taste to like R.E.M. It doesn't have the digestible quality the general public tends to look for in its favorite musicians.

Talking to all those great writers and artists for the magazine was a form of graduate school for me.

We've come under the influence of television, where in all honesty we can follow a show that could just get cancelled midway through the season and the entire plotline never resolves itself.

Looking back, [R.E.M.]videos, by in large, have always been art films. I'm thinking of "Losing My Religion." That's a landmark piece.

There is something very romantic about the orphan figure in American literature.

My strength is character. I'm pretty good at building walking-talking humans with brains like beehives.

I had lived in New York since 1996, sometimes in the worst neighborhoods, without even locking my door half the time.

Every time I try to write on vacation, I fail miserably.

Why I love chess and tennis - the volleying aspect, and the fact that your competitors' reactions and motivations and bluffs come into the game itself.

It's hard for me to figure out where I want to be. But it's definitely in New York. I feel like New York throws different challenges at you and you can be more creative.

One day I want to write a full-on horror book.

In a lot of ways, work was my graduate school.

I just think, as writers, especially with a book that takes years to write, you sort of wake up every morning hoping and praying that you can make it work for the day.

There are certain moments where artwork might seem like it's part of someone's career - if you really know the art world - , but I did my best to prevent that overlap.

Both my parents were big readers. My dad liked more macho adventure books like Shogun or spy novels. My mother reads murder mysteries. In fact, so does her mother, my grandma.

I'm convinced I was the only kid ever who had a Death on the Nile [1978] movie poster and a Murder on the Orient Express [1974] movie poster on his bedroom walls.

The death drive is parasitic. It runs off of other drives, leeching off of them.

There's also something sexual about watching the nubile girl in terror. But you do take on her fear as your own.

There's something about fear and aesthetic that go hand in hand.