Tom Perrotta

I write about kids growing up, I write a lot about schools and parents, and all of my experiences with those things have been suburban experiences.

I used to describe myself as a comic novelist, but my concerns seem to have darkened over the past few years.

My wife and I left New York when she got pregnant - we just thought it would be really hard to stay in the city.

I read 'The Great Gatsby' in high school and was hypnotized by the beauty of the sentences and moved by the story about the irrevocability of lost love.

My novels are certainly more exciting than my own life.

It just so happened that for most of my life I've lived in the suburbs.

I have actual dreams of Bruce Springsteen calling me up on stage to wear a bandanna and play rhythm guitar next to Little Steven.

I'm used to adapting my novels for feature film - it can be challenging to cut and compress three or four hundred pages into two hours of dramatic action.

I was writing very early, like I was involved in our high school literary magazine, which was called 'Pariah.' The football team was the Bears, and the literary magazine was 'Pariah.' It was great. It was definitely a real sub-culture. But I wrote stories for them.

When I was writing 'The Abstinence Teacher,' I really tried to immerse myself in contemporary American evangelical culture.

I no longer believe that just about everything is funny, if viewed from the proper angle.

When things don't go well, it helps to think of yourself as a genius and the rest of the world as a bunch of idiots.