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.

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

My best stories come out of nowhere, with no concern for form at all.

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