I hadn't learned yet that everybody's locked up some way or other. That's how life is we're all imprisoned by something.

One of the beautiful and terrible things about America is you can go there and still be whatever you want, if you bust your ass and you have some luck.

Being an unpublished novelist has about as much social acceptability as being a shopping bag lady.

Coming after all the bullshit related to A Million Little Pieces, nobody was expecting anything from me. No publisher, no agent, no one. Just me and the book. It was great.

Most books aren't pure nonfiction or fiction.

I listen to the tick of an unseen clock marking moments of time long passed.

About life: "It is not complicated unless I make it so. It is not difficult unless I allow it to be. A second is no more than a second, a minute no more than a minute, a day no more than a day. They pass. All things and all time will pass. Don't force or fear, don't control or lose control. Don't fight and don't stop fighting. Embrace and endure. If you embrace, you will endure.