... survival is the least of my desires.

I'm still very blunt: If you want to be a writer, get a day job. The fact that I have actually been able to make a living at it is astonishing.

It ain't that you get religion. Religion gets you and then milks you dry. Won't let you drink a little whiskey. Won't let you make no fat-assed girls grin and giggle. Won't let you do a damn thing except work for what you'll get in the hearafter. I live in the here and now.

...I have come to make distinctions between what I call the academy and literature, the moral equivalents of church and God. The academy may lie, but literature tries to tell the truth.

I claimed myself and remade my life.

Two or three things I know for sure, and one is that I'd rather go naked than wear the coat the world has made for me.

she got a reputation for an easy smile and a sharp tongue, and using one to balance the other, she seemed friendly but distant