Never read bad stuff if you're an artist; it will impair your own game.

One day you'll have a quiet heart.

Don't undo a brave and noble deed. Don't rob yourself of your own virtue.

Humility is not a virtue in a writer, it is an absolute necessity.

When people make a contract with the devil and give him an air-conditioned office to work in, he doesn't go back home easily.

I also believe my home state is cursed by ignorance and poverty and racism, much of it deliberately inculcated to control a vulnerable electorate. And I believe many of the politicians in Louisiana are among the most stomach-churning examples of white trash and venality I have ever known. To me, the fact that large numbers of people find them humorously picaresque is mind numbing, on a level with telling fond tales of one's rapist.

I looked at Lucas with the pang that a parent feels when he knows his child will be hurt and that it's no one's fault and that to try to preempt the rites of passage is an act of contempt for the child's courage.