I hate to be fatalistic about it, but alcoholism, it's just in your genes. We had some of it in my family, and it just got me.

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.

The point is to strip down, get protestant, then even more naked. Walk over scorched bricks to find your own soul. Your heart a searching dog in the rubble.

I was always kind of florid. And full of rhetoric. That was my flaw. My whole time writing, I've had to work against that because it can be a wrecking posture.

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

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