I'm not a big believer in disciplined writers. What does discipline mean? The writer who forces himself to sit down and write for seven hours every day might be wasting those seven hours if he's not in the mood and doesn't feel the juice. I don't think discipline equals creativity.

What do you do?' she asks, holding out the vest. 'What do you do?' 'What do you do?' she asks, her voice shaking. 'Don't ask me, please. Okay, Clay?' 'Why not?' She sits on the mattress after I get up. Muriel screams. 'Because... I don't know,' she sighs. I look at her and don't feel anything and walk out with my vest.

I tried to make meat loaf out of the girl but it becomes too frustrating a task and instead I spend the afternoon smearing her meat all over the walls, chewing on strips of skin I ripped from her body

Our lives are not all interconnected. That theory is a crock. Some people truly do not need to be here.

... her taste in music haunted my memory and I had to stop at Tower Records on the Upper West Side to buy ninety dollars' worth of rap CDs but, as expected, I'm at a loss: [...] voices uttering ugly words like digit, pudding, chunk.

'Do you know what Ed Gein said about women?' [...] '"When I see a pretty girl walking down the street I think two things. One part of me wants to take her out and talk to her and be real nice and sweet and treat her right."' I stop finish my J&B in one swallow. 'What does the other part of him think?' Hamlin asks tentatively. 'What her head would look like on a stick...'

I don't know why I write what I write.