Q: The interviewer asked Sally Potter what Rage was about, and she said you have an analytical part of your brain that kicks in later in the process, but you don't want to use it too soon, or it will interfere with the intuitive leaps an artist needs to make.

She said you often don't know what a work of art is about until late in the process. It's about a cluster of things.

Trying to refine what it's about into a pitch distorts how the process works.

A: That's what's wrong about asking a writer to talk, in a proposal, about who his audience is and what books his book is in competition for an audience with.

An artist doesn't think that way.

You might even say he mustn't. It's bad juju.

Q: Same with a platform. What is your platform.

A: My platform is a pair of 13EEE brogans with housepaint on them.

I look like Nick Nolte in New York Stories.

He called the performance artist Steve Buscemi "a comedian."

The tension between creativity and marketing is what Rage is about. Between art and commerce. How the artist has to deal with people who control the money. Whether it's the designer or the critic, who pays the piper calls the tune.

It's frustrating.

A man alone ain't got no fucking chance, and even a beautiful woman, youth fades. One gets old. One loses a step. Age creeps up. You can't do what you used to.

Q: Sally Potter said Graham Greene would write what his book was about down and tape it to the typewriter as soon as he knew, but he often didn't know until near the end of the book.

A: I am hoping that FLORIDA WRITER: A PI NOVEL will win an Edgar for Biography/Criticism, like Norman Sherry's biography of Graham Greene did.

Q: An Edgar is for mysteries.

A: It's a mystery to me. What it means.