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.

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

I thought I was writing for a fairly hip, intelligent crowd; I just thought there were more of them out there. But they're not. They're not out there waiting. They're not gonna use their intelligence on your book.

The alcohol had the code and mystery about it as a writer's drug, but I'm glad that's been debunked. But the trouble with the drinking, much as I hate to admit it, is it helped the work.

I don't really believe in a creative-writing major as an undergraduate. It's a bad idea, terrible. I've met creative-writing majors from other places and they don't know a goddamn thing. They're the worst students. They just think they're good because they could pass.

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.

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.