"I was really raised by independent bookstores. My brother, Harry, and I would take the bus into Harvard Square, where there were so many, though my favorites was Wordsworth, which had these benches upon which a child could sit and read all day. We also hit the Harvard Bookstore, and the Million Year Picnic, a fantastic comic book store, both of which are still there.
"And one of the luckiest things that ever happened to me is that in grad school I won $500 worth of books from Prairie Lights in Iowa City, which was an unfathomable amount in 1990, and I can still remember a lot of the books that Paul Ingram loaded into my arms: Friend of My Youth, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, Deadwood, Paris Trout, Memories of a Catholic Girlhood, Geek Love. To read Geek Love for the first time! I knew that if I just asked for the books I would love, he would find them for me. Independent bookstores have done a lot for me as a writer, too--I have depended on them all my writing life--but it's my reading life that I think of instantly. (And I cannot wait to come back to Parnassus. I have always wanted to be friends with the proprietor of a bookstore.)"