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.

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

If we break promises to God, shouldn't we be allowed an occasional violation of our word to our friends and superiors?

If you put somebody on a crack pipe and give them a 9 mm Baretta, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out what's going to happen next.

In the alluvial sweep of the land, I thought I could see the past and the present and the future all at once, as though time were not sequential in nature but took place without a beginning or an end, like a flash of green light rippling outward from the center of creation, not unlike a dream inside the mind of God.

Using a first-person narrator is simply a matter of hearing the voice inside yourself.

You have two choices in life. You either die or do something with your time. You're going to be doing something - why not write?