Strangely enough, for many many years I didn't talk about my childhood and then when I did I got a ton of mail - literally within a year I got a couple of thousand letters from people who'd had a worse childhood, a similar childhood, a less-bad childhood, and the question that was most often posed to me in those letters was: how did you get past the trauma of being raised by a violent alcoholic?

I come down on the side of free will but I have sympathy for those who believe in fate because there is something about life which we feel we have no control over.

The world is full of broken people. Splints, casts, miracle drugs, and time can't mend fractured hearts, wounded hearts, wounded minds, torn spirits.

If Edgar Allan Poe were alive today, his agent would be constantly slapping him upside the head with tightly rolled copies of his brilliant short stories and novelettes, yelling, 'Full-length novels, you moron! Pay attention! What's the matter with you -- are you shooting heroin or something? Write for the market! No more of this midlength 'Fall of the House of Usher' crap

I am my own worst enemy. This, more than any other trait, proves my fundamental humanity.

The functions of intellect are insufficient without courage, love, friendship, compassion and empathy.

Fate isn’t one straight road…there are forks in it, many different routes to different ends. We have the free will to choose the path.