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

Whoever you are, be that person with all your might. Time goes by faster than we thought. It is a thief so quiet. You must let yourself be loved and you must love, parts of you that never loved must open and love. You must announce yourself in all particulars so you can have yourself.

Some writers are curiously unmusical. I don't get it. I don't get them. For me, music is essential. I always have music on when I'm doing well. Writing and music are two different mediums, but musical phrases can give you sentences that you didn't think you ever had.

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

The Deep South might be wretched, but it can howl.

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

I wanted very much to be Miles Davis when I was a boy, but without the practice. It just looked like an endless road.