Love and despair go hand in hand.

Time is what makes good stories. Much has been cooking for a long time, and at last finds an out in narration one day. That's a supreme joy. And why the characters keep showing up.

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.

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.

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.

You need to see a bit of hell now and then. That, and great joy.

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.