The first two drinks were always wonderfully liberating. You think better. You're braver, and you'll say anything. If you could just hang in there with two or three, it'd be beautiful. The trouble was I couldn't.

I grew up when people seemed actually to be hurting themselves for their art. Of course, some of it was phony.

Most novels I come across have all the excitement of a long trip on a bus with a sensitive glee club. Yammer and chat.

Where is the angry machine of all of us? Why is God such a blurred magician? Why are you begging for your life if you believe those things? Prove to me that you’re better than the rabbits we ate last night.

You've got to lie to stay halfway interested in yourself.

I don't write under the ghost of Faulkner. I live in the same town and find his life and work inspiring, but that's it. I have a motorcycle and tool along the country lanes. I travel at my own speed.

I don't really care about plot; I want to have a page-turner in a different kind of way.