Look, man, we'd probably most of us agree that these are dark times, and stupid ones, but do we need fiction that does nothing but dramatize how dark and stupid everything is?

Happiness is not like we were walking around fingering razor blades or anything like that. But it just sort of seems as if - we sort of knew how happy our parents were, and we would compare our lives with our parents and see that, at least on the surface or according to the criteria that the culture lays down for a successful, happy life, we were actually doing better than a lot of them were.

How odd I can have all this inside me and to you it’s just words.

I'm not putting any of this well. I am not and never have been an intellectual. I am not articulate, and the subjects that I am trying to describe and discuss are beyond my abilities. I am trying, however, the best I can, and will go back over this as carefully as possible when I am finished, and will make changes and corrections whenever I can see a way to make what I'm discussing clearer or more interesting without fabricating anything.

[I]f the writer does his job right, what he basically does is remind the reader of how smart the reader is.

I will probably write an hour a day and spend eight hours a day biting my knuckle and worrying about not writing.

The sound of wind had become, for me, silence. When it went away, I was left with the squeak of the blood in my head and the aural glitter of all those little eardrum hairs quivering like a drunk in withdrawal.