The neighborhoods I grew up in were poor and full of drug users. I don't think you have to look that hard to find those kinds of lives. But I also don't think you have to have experienced it really close to be able to empathize.

And if a moment exists only in one's perception anyway, then perhaps the rush of feeling he has now is THE MOMENT, and not merely its shadow.

If you come from money and you become an addict, you go to the Betty Ford Clinic, you get treatment. If you're living on the street and you're an addict, it's much harder to find your way out.

Because I'm a novelist, I think in terms of structure. The way I keep going is through structure. It's what inspires me and pushes me through.

This is what happens when you live in dreams, he thought: you dream this and you dream that and you sleep right through your life.

No one gets to tell you what your life means!

Maybe it's ALWAYS the end of the world. Maybe you're alive for a while, and then you realize you're going to die, and that's such an insane thing to comprehend, you look around for answers and the only answer is that the world must die with you.