Andrew Sean Greer

Any gay man in America redeals a deck at some point.

I have come to this conclusion: if 'sentimentality' is lazy emotion, then the term itself is lazy criticism.

I don't think I'm a gay activist. I used to be.

A downside to being a successful novelist? Wow - I can't imagine one.

I think what shaped me was I had two parents who were scientists, and especially, they were great readers. They had both grown up in sort of rural parts of the South and were oddballs where they grew up. They were budding intellectuals.

Human love and desire is my bag.

I love going to writers' colonies in pastoral settings where there's nothing to do but either walk around or read a book or work on your book, and they all seem helpful.

I'm not despairing of love at all.

My mother taught me to ask people about the things they love.

Critics, how I would love if you could clear the word 'sentimental' from your minds.

They had a contest where they would - for some reason, someone in the past loved musical theater, and so if you wrote a musical, they would fully fund it and put it on the main stage with full costumes and a set and everything, and my roommate said we should totally do that.

I think screenplay is hard. I've tried that, and it felt really difficult; like, all the stuff I think I'm good at, like description and internal experience and memory, you can't do that - or, at least, I couldn't figure out a way.