A lot of people get the wrong impression, think there's something romantic or tragic about hitting bottom.

I didn't feel that so much as an outsider when I started writing; I've felt that way all my life. I don't know, man; I guess I was just wired wrong. When I was growing up, I always wanted to be somebody else and live somewhere else. I've always felt a little uncomfortable around people. And I'm not trying to romanticize this, because it wasn't romantic. I wasn't trying to be a rebel; I just always felt a little out of it. I think that's why it's pretty easy for me to identify with people living on the margins.

The Oxys filled holes in me I hadn't realized were empty. It was, at least for those first few months, a wonderful way to be disabled. I felt blessed.

Michael Koryta is an amazingly talented writer, and I rank The Prophet as one of the sharpest and superbly plotted crime novels I've read in my life.

A lot of people get the wrong impression, think there's something romantic or tragic about hitting bottom.

One of the reasons I write about religion is due to my own envy of people who truly feel the presence of god in their lives, good souls who believe devoutly in a supreme being and an afterlife.

When I first started out, I was trying to write stories about nurses and lawyers and a lot of people I didn't know anything about, and they just weren't working.