It didnt take long to establish myself, as far as people thinking my work was good. They liked it from the start.

I wanted to write literature that pushed people into their lives rather than helping people escape from them.

I write scripts in storyboard fashion using stick figures, and thought balloons and word balloons and captions. Then I'll write descriptions of what scenes should look like and turn it over to the artist

Im pretty aggressive, and maybe obnoxious, about trying to get work.

I felt more alone that week than any. Sometimes I'd feel a body lying next to me like an amputee feels a phantom limb. All I did was think about Jennie Gerhardt and Alice Quinn and all the decades of people I had known. The more I thought, the more I felt like crying. Life seemed so sweet and so sad, and so hard to let go of in the end. But hey, man, every day is a brand new deal, right? Just keep on working and something's bound to turn up.

Everybody's like everybody else, and everybody's different from everybody else.

Ordinary life is pretty complex stuff.