But even Es and cocaine, over the years they blow holes in your brain, rob you of your memories, your past. Which is fair enough, convenient even.

In America, we've got to get back to these base principles of what democracy is.

I grew up in what was not so much a familyas a genetic disaster.

There is a kind of mysticism to writing.

Are you asking me or telling me?

The thing about drugs is that it [dealing] gives people an income to deal with, and it also gives people a compelling drama in their lives that they used to get from the office and the factory, and they're no longer there. What happens if you have everything in the hands of the state, particularly in the line of an authoritarian state, they just give people drugs to keep them doped up, to keep them passive.

It's hard to maintain both smack and crack habbits and remember to keep up mobile-phone payments.