I think challenges are what any decent writer would be all about. If you actually do find your slide and grease it, shame on you. Me, I get bored very easily. As a writer I get bored even faster than I do in real life. I mean, I like fast cars; I've driven a lot of racecars. You need some stimulation. If I find something that seems too difficult to do, too difficult to research, or beyond your writing abilities, it's a perfect invitation to try it.

Religion seems to have always offered us that false duality ... the silences of infinite space or the cozy comfort of inner certainty.

God is found in this Life ... to wait for another is folly.

Most of us do know we have no immortality. And when you've found a genius, someone who has already purchased his immortality in musical or literary terms, it's maddening.

Words were like objects, making the idea more solid -- less a poisonous gas and more a ... cube of crystallized thought.

Writing, Im convinced, should be a subversive activity - frowned on by the authorities - and not one cooed over and praised beyond common sense by some teacher.

Power: a currency that never went out of style.