You develop a sensibility when you're a young child. Some people say your personality is formed in the first three, four years of your life.

I considered people who didn't like my work to be in some way defective, deficient, lacking a sense of humor, and not understanding what was really going on.

I found it extremely annoying when somebody would say something like "You seem to be influenced by Ken Nordine." And I didn't even know who Ken Nordine was.

It's about being in a race with time - just having a strong sense of mortality, and the idea of, How much time do you have left? How do you want to spend it? What I always come up with is: keep on writing, keep on working. But you can become sterile. It's become a matter of trying to find inspiration someplace outside of my own head, which I've been using exclusively for too long.

Stop at nothing to get the best work that you can get. Betray, violate, cause enormous harm.

When I went to the University of Iowa in order to be a writer, I thought, This is the worst way to learn how to write. To sit in a room with a bunch of would-be writers, who want to write the Great American Novel, every one of them, and you read their stories and they read yours, and you're not living a life. I don't like that. I like learning on the job. The character of my work has definitely evolved from the character of my life.

You've got to destroy a few lives on the way to where you want to get.