Someday you will die, and until you know that, you're useless to me.

Only after disaster can we be resurrected.

More and more, the hardest part of crying is when I can't stop.

Screenwriters get paid a hell of a lot more money but their level of frustration seems to be so high that I don't want that.

All major publishing houses have these big fat biographies sitting there, waiting for people to die. All you have to do is slap on the end and put in on the market. It's that kind of commoditization and completion of your life before you die - and this kind of imposition of a public idea of self that replaces the actual living self - that I find so frightening.

You hear the best stories from ordinary people. That sense of immediacy is more real to me than a lot of writerly, literary-type crafted stories. I want that immediacy when I read a novel.

Rant Casey used to say, "No matter what happens, it's always now..." Talk about cryptic. I think what Rant meant was, we live in the present moment of reality, and no matter what's come before, no matter how much we loved a person or a dog, when it attacks us we'll react to that moment of danger.