There came a time in every prolonged effort when he had a moment of near panic, or 'terror in a lonely place', the original semantic content of the word. The lonely place was his own mind.

It's true that some of us become better writers by living long enough. But this is also how we become worse writers. The trick is to die in between.

California deserves whatever it gets. Californians invented the concept of life-style. This alone warrants their doom.

I'm not reclusive at all. Just private.

I slept for four years. I didn't study much of anything. I majored in something called communication arts.

There's a moral force in a sentence when it comes out right. It speaks the writer's will to live.

Every advance in knowledge and technique is matched by a new kind of death, a new strain. Death adapts, like a viral agent.