No one can call themselves a writer until he or she has written at least fifty stories.

Rap's conscious response to the poverty and oppression of U.S. blacks is like some hideous parody of sixties black pride.

This is so American, man: either make something your God and cosmos and then worship it, or else kill it.

Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude - but the fact is that, in the day-to-day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have life-or-death importance. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense.

My whole life I've been a fraud. I'm not exaggerating. Pretty much all I've ever done all the time is try to create a certain impression of me in other people. Mostly to be liked or admired. It's a little more complicated than that, maybe. But when you come right down to it it's to be liked, loved. Admired, approved of, applauded, whatever. You get the idea.

I like the fans’ sound at night. Do you? It’s like somebody big far away goes like: it’sOKit’sOKit’sOKit’sOK, over and over. From very far away.

I often think I can see it in myself and in other young writers, this desperate desire to please coupled with a kind of hostility to the reader.