I think that a lot of people are in love with stress. It's the dirty little secret of Western civilization. People often mistake stress for fuel.... to me, stress is just another bad drug that I don't want to do.

I need - and occasionally love - to write for the same reasons I always did: hard as writing is, it's generally easier than life.

The Adderall Diaries is phenomenal. With jittery finesse and a reformed tweaker's eye for detail, Stephen Elliott captures the terrifying, hilarious, heart-strangling reality of a life whose scorched-earth physical and psycho-emotional dimensions no one could have invented - they absolutely had to be lived. By all rights, the author should either be dead or chewing his fingers in a bus station. Instead, he may well have written the memoir of an entire generation.

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.

There's no deodorant for desperation.

A waft of sweet hash drifted by, and I wanted to float after it like Wimpy levitating at the scent of a hamburger.

The traditional dictionary definition of the difference is that an alcoholic will steal your wallet in a blackout, come to, and apologize for it. A junkie will steal your wallet and then help you look for it. But ultimately I think all addictions boil down to just not being able to be with yourself for any long degree of time.