A writers job is to destroy and then to build the thing back up again by a chosen means.

I wanted very much to be Miles Davis when I was a boy, but without the practice. It just looked like an endless road.

You need to see a bit of hell now and then. That, and great joy.

There was no one, when I was in school, who talked about going in and blowing up students. The teachers were very stern and hateable, but nobody ever mentioned murder.

I distrust thought. The interior life is highly overrated. I don't like the wispy and the vague... or inductive logic in any kind of writing. I'm impatient with writers who make too much sense. The better things that I've done have come to me by instinct.

I never pulled a loaded pistol on anybody, but it got around that I did. It got turned into lore. It's a myth. There's so much bad gun stuff.

Professional Southerners sicken me.