Jay McInerney

We've been hearing about the death of the novel ever since the day after Don Quixote was published.

Most novelists I know went through a period of intense self-examination and self-loathing after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. I certainly did.

There's a socialist bias to the consensus of the literary world: a '30s mentality that says factory workers are more worthy of our attention.

Eat, drink and remarry is my motto.

I feel that there's a lot of would-be guardians of the culture who think that high-minded literary purpose and the life that gets chronicled in the gossip columns, that these two things are incompatible.

You know, I'm always surprised when I read profiles, and they make me sound so jaded. I am so not jaded.

I don't think I've left a trail of weeping women in my wake. I mean, the number of serious relationships I've had has not been into double digits.

I'm afraid that - not necessarily deliberately, but consistently - I've made a kind of laboratory out of my life, where I mix the stuff in the test tubes to create explosions - possibly resulting in interesting by-products. I mean, not deliberately - I'd be crazy to deliberately do that - or maybe not.

There is a type of writer that can happily bury themselves in the country and dig very deep, but I'm not like that.

My former wife is a very eccentric woman, which is why I still love her.

Sometimes I think everything I touch turns into a Page Six item.

I think a lot of the people who write about me think that if they had to write fewer interviews then they would transcribe their life-story and it would be a big success. Or should be.

Anybody who becomes a movie star becomes successful at projecting a certain image to the public.