I see all. I hear all. I know all. And I spend a great deal of time in the bathroom.

I cannot pay attention to what people say about my work. For me, personally, I am just this shards-and-ashes human being, who really gets upset when someone says something bad about me. If it's true, I cop to it. If I have any good qualities, it's that.

I know that pain is the most important thing in the universes. Greater than survival, greater than love, greater even than the beauty it brings about. For without pain, there can be no pleasure. Without sadness, there can be no happiness. Without misery there can be no beauty. And without these, life is endless, hopeless, doomed and damned. Adult. You have become adult.

In these days of widespread illiteracy, functional illiteracy... anything that keeps people stupid is a felony.

My philosophy of life is that the meek shall inherit nothing but debasement, frustration, and ignoble deaths.

I think art must be tough! I think art has to be hard. I don't think it should be easy. I think it should take foot-pounds of energy to produce that art, otherwise we would have more mediocre writers, and we don't have room for any more mediocrity in the world. There's already enough of it being visited on us night and day through the Internet, and through television, and through politics.

If you let the image of the messenger get in the way of whatever message there may be, however large or small, that's your problem, not his.