Sometimes we have the absolute certainty there's something inside us that's so hideous and monstrous that if we ever search it out we won't be able to stand looking at it. But it's when we're willing to come face to face with that demon that we face the angel.

I knew the alphabet. Maybe I could be a writer.

An extraordinary writer....It is the vastness of Nick Tosches’ heart that makes it possible to reveal the darkness.

There are a lot of people in this country who really like my writing. And a lot of writers respect me. But the so-called establishment? They hate me.

It seems to me that what the artist sees is the simple and obvious that is invisible to everybody else.

For weeks Tyrone thought he was going to die any minute, and there were also times when he was afraid he wasnt going to die.

I think in a way the great irony or paradox about America is that it makes it so hard for the sensitive person, the artist, the impressionable person, the person whose raison d'etre is to incarnate the creative will, rather than to just make money, and yet that extreme difficulty that the culture poses for us has created some of the best artists in the last hundred years.