If you are able to explain suffering, a man once told him, you weren't really there.

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

What a bog and labyrinth the human essence is... We are all overbrained and overemotioned.

If you are able to explain suffering, a man once told him, you weren't really there.

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.

Love and despair go hand in hand.

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.