If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character, would you slow down? Or speed up?

Picture anybody growing up so stupid he didn't know that hope is just another phase you'll grow out of.

All you can do is hope for a pattern to emerge, and sometimes it never does. Still, with a plan, you only get the best you can imagine. I'd always hoped for something better than that.

With the novels, I usually start from something in my own life that I can't resolve, so I turn it into a metaphor and for months or sometimes years I'll exhaust all of my emotional reaction to this issue by making it enormous on the page.

As the child outlives the father,so must the character bury the author.

Where every day doesn't start with an alarm clock and end with the television.

I want my whole life lined with a topical anesthetic.