Real smarts begin when you quit quoting other people.

If you could be either God’s worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose?

We don't have a great war in our generation, or a great depression, but we do, we have a great war of the spirit. We have a great revolution against the culture. The great depression is our lives. We have a spiritual depression.

My books are more about people experimenting with different identities and social models in a short-term way before they can break through to something authentic.

The liberator who destroys my property is fighting to save my spirit. The teacher who clears all possessions from my path will set me free.

I take pens and I write on the inside of my arm. When I'm with people and somebody says a really fascinating anecdote, or fact, or phrase, I'll write it on the inside of my arm. At the end of the day, I'll take the very best things that are on my arm and I'll copy them into a notebook that I always carry and only when the weather is absolutely terrible will I really key the very best of that notebook into the computer. At that point, it's all sort of censored twice - only the best things go from the arm to the book and only the best things go from the book to the computer.

It seems that so much writing is being done in the nineteenth-century model, where every connection has to be thoroughly explained.