I have all of the Apple products. Everything I've ever written, I've written on a Mac. My first computer, my roommates and I chipped in, and we got that first Macintosh - 128K. It had as much memory as a greeting card that plays music.
I was the guy who didn't get a cool little apartment. I took one for the team. I liked having the place we could make noise in, the place that could be the center of the music. I sat down and calculated it one day, and over the years, I've had something like 38 roommates.
For years, I believed that anything worth doing was worth doing early. In graduate school, I submitted my dissertation two years in advance. In college, I wrote my papers weeks early and finished my thesis four months before the due date. My roommates joked that I had a productive form of obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Greenpoint was where I had my first apartment on my own without roommates or sleeping on someone's couch. It was a really important time for me.
I adopted a motto: Never say no. Jim Morrison never said no, Kurt Cobain never said no. You couldn't have great things to write about if all you did was sit in your living room with your roommates talking about the phone bill.
If you live in a family or have five roommates, there's some sort of reality check, but when you live alone, there's a lot more leeway for your fantasy life to be more and more a part of your everyday life.
I've been struggling so long with my career that I haven't been in a position to invite a woman into my life. It would have been like, 'Hey, come live with me and my two roommates, and let's make ramen noodles tonight.'