Life can be lived as a temporary arrangement. Life is a temporary arrangement! But the longer you go without changing, the more obscure the likelihood you ever will. After enough time passes, the idea of another way of life grows even more misty.

I always tell myself, when I remember the non-stop self-generated hell party that used to be my life, I wouldn't be here if I didn't go there.

I think it's just too kinda juicy and compelling to imagine people in their private lives, but then half the time people's private lives are just so much more bizarre and Ted Haggard-like than you could ever imagine. It's almost hard to write fiction anymore.

You can't really compare hells. But I suppose the hell of being strung out on another person's addictive behavior is its own special thing.

My own theory is that people are just so desperate for somebody they can feel better than, in America. Now that everyone's going broke and working 17 jobs - if they have one at all - at least they can look at these guys behind bars and think, "At least I get to wear my own clothes to work."

This is, I believe, what happens when people take their own lives. They're not killing themselves, they're killing the world. Either to spare it pain or to cause it some, depending.

Junkies are liars. They have to be professionally.