Hell, I'm going to play pro basketball. I'm going to maybe be famous. I'm going to write books.

Remember that a book is many drafts - mine certainly are. It's improvisation. It's as much jazz and the way we talk and the way I heard people preach coming up as it is writing.

I'm very hard-nosed and cold-blooded and I can walk past a drowning man. If I have someplace else to go, well, tough s**t. I could do that. I can. Have. Sometimes, not because I was callous but had to do it.

Good writing is always about things that are important to you, things that are scary to you, things that eat you up.

That's the beauty and the terror of being human beings: We just have these symbolic languages, these dreams, and that's all it ever is.

Do not fall asleep in your enemy's dream.

I'm not a fearful person, but I'm a pretty pessimistic person. So some of my best times are waiting, anticipating. That's the way it always has been with me, whether anticipating a ball game, anticipating a relationship.