the best often die by their own hand just to get away, and those left behind can never quite understand why anybody would ever want to get away from them

Your writing", she said to me, "it's so raw. It's like a sledgehammer, and yet it has humor and tenderness. . . .

There's nothing like privacy. You know, I like people. It's nice that they might like my books and all that...but I'm not the book, see? I'm the guy who wrote it, but I don't want them to come up and throw roses on me or anything. I want them to let me breathe.

I've found out why men sign their names to their works- not that they created them but more than the others did not.

Intellectuals say simple things in difficult ways. Artists say difficult things in simple ways.

In the morning it was morning and I was still alive.

When a writer is swayed with his fame and his fortune, you can float him down the river with the turds.