There is a fullness and calmness there which can come only from knowing pain.

We are all eaters of souls.

The sum of the crowd's IQ was far below that of its most modest single member. Mobs have passions, not brains.

Doing a life study while drunk and in the process of being seduced is never a formula for quality art.

There were reprints of American editorials. Liberals saw it as a resurgence of social protest and decried the discrimination, poverty, and hunger that had provoked it. Conservative columnists acidly pointed out that hungry people don't steal stereo systems first and called for a crackdown in law enforcement. All of the reasoned editorials sounded hollow in light of the perverse randomness of the event. It was as if only a thin wall of electric lighting protected the great cities of the world from total barbarism.

The Victorians, they were like the Germans in World War II. They could not stop recording details about their lives and their age.

The best advice that an accomplished writer could give a beginning writer is probably, "Find your slide and then grease it." Almost every writer that wants a rewarding career, in terms of money and status and number of readers, finally finds a certain genre or certain style that he or she sticks with until reaching a critical mass of readership. And I've violated this from the get-go.