Anyone who says he wants to be a writer and isn't writing, doesn't.

Got tight last night on absinthe and did knife tricks. Great success shooting the knife underhand into the piano. The woodworms are so bad and eat hell out of all the furniture that you can always claim the woodworms did it.

Show the readers everything, tell them nothing.

Good dialogue is not real speech-it's the illusion of real speech.

Life is the best left hooker I ever saw, although some say it was Charlie White of Chicago

I read my own books sometimes to cheer me when it is hard to write, and then I remember that it was always difficult, and how nearly impossible it was sometimes.

If you have to go away,' she said,'is it absolutely necessary to kill off everything you leave behind? I mean do you have to take away everything?