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

I always intended to be light and open. I misjudged the American audience.

I'll tell you why I like writing: it's just jumping into a pool. I get myself into a kind of trance. I engage the world, but it's also wonderful to just escape. I try to find the purities out of the confusion. It's pretty old-fashioned, but it's fun.

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.

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

The Deep South might be wretched, but it can howl.

My stories do have plot. They're not just scattered language; they're controlled, toward an end.