The hard rain nailed the night to the city.

I've got a long list of books I wish I'd never written-and I've kept them all out of print for the past 20 years.

Sometimes it seemed that the human heart, this side of Eden, feared life more than death, light more than darkness, freedom more than surrender.

My life has a mysterious purpose that I don't understand, and day by day, conflict by conflict, I learn by going where I have to go.

Tommy told Sal about the strange white-cloth figure with black stitches that he had found on the front porch. "Sounds like Pillsbury Doughboy gone punk," Sal said.

Where there's cake, there's hope. And there's always cake.

There's still a fascination with somebody who can write at book length, no matter what the book is.