Despair, in short, seeks its own environment as surely as water finds its own level.

The real resistance now is to an art which forces its audience to recognize and accept imaginatively, in their nerve ends, not the facts of life but the facts of death and violence: absurd, random, gratuitous, unjustified, and inescapably part of the society we have created.

I absolutely don't believe in anything. Full stop. Including luck.

Now, if, as I think, writing should be, it's a kind of risky trade.

When you make a bet, you're saying something.

I'm good at reading people.

It is easy to smile at an insult and pretend it's funny when the person insulting you is hosing you with money.