Artists recognize other artists as soon as the pencil begins to move.

Prison always has been a good place for writers, killing, as it does, the twin demons of mobility and diversion

There's a unique bond of trust between readers and authors that I don't believe exists in any other art form; as a reader, I trust a novelist to give me his or her best effort, however flawed.

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.

No book or poem is ever finished, merely abandoned.

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

Barbarians, we call them, while all the while we timidly cling to our Web like Visigoths crouching in the ruins of Rome's faded glory and proclaim ourselves civilized.