The music I listen to while writing is really scene-specific. It's just a great motivator, a way to put myself in the mood.

Film fixes a precise visual image in the viewer's head. In fiction, you just hope you're precise enough to convey the intended effect.

Silence creates it's own violence.

You can either waste time worrying about a death that might not come or concentrate on what’s left to you.

The city might be savage, stray dogs might share the streets with grimy urchins whose blank eyes reflected the knowledge that they might soon be covered over, blinded forever, by the same two pennies just begged from some gentleman, and no one in the fuming, fulminous boulevards of trade might know who actually ran Ambergris-or, if anyone ran it at all, but, like a renegade clock, it ran on and wound itself heedless, empowered by the insane weight of its own inertia, the weight of its own citizenry.

I always try to be alert to the potential for repetition, for a decaying orbit with regard to my use of technique, etc.

There's also a lot of gritty Americana type of bands. I actually have a lot of Britpop on my iPod, too.