If anything, I've probably tended more toward humor in my writing and veered more toward pleasure in my personal life.

If I’d been talking about black trash, I might be lynched. If I was talking about white trash, I’d merely be another torchbearer in an ongoing national lynching.

I believe "human sexuality" is one of the most ridiculous aspects of being a human, and here I was, facing publications whose prevailing editorial slant sought to portray our basic rutting instincts as something "ennobling" and "empowering," to depict women who were fundamentally whores and predominantly unstable as "sex workers" and "goddesses."

There were people whom I considered friends or loved ones who either abandoned me or betrayed me in ways I'd never have suspected. But there were others who had been barely acquaintances of mine whose loyalty and efforts on my behalf made me realize that not everyone was as inherently rotten as I'd previously believed. So it caused a violent split in my view of humanity - people turned out to be far worse and far better than I'd ever dreamed possible.

I've realized there are far more efficient and devastating methods of disturbing people than merely sloshing around in the pigpen with obvious, profane, scatological, flat-brained, grade-school offensiveness.

I could have completely lost my mind or became a junkie or abandoned all sense and judgment and committed some rash, stupid act that would have sent me right back into the cage. Instead, I chose to be happy - but not so much for the sake of happiness as for spite.

Most of those who spend their lives as critics secretly wish they'd be considered important enough for someone to bother criticizing them.