There's no reason you shouldn't, as a writer, not be aware of the necessity to revise yourself constantly.

When I finally write the first sentence, I want to know everything that happens, so that I am not inventing the story as I write it - rather, I am remembering a story that has already happened.

There was no manifestation of contemporary culture that did not indicate to my grandmother how steadfast was the nation's decline, how merciless our mental and moral deterioration, how swiftly all-embracing our final decadence. I never saw her read a book again; but she referred to books often - as if they were shrines and cathedrals of learning that television had plundered and then abandoned.

If watching television doesn't hasten death, it surely manages to make death very inviting; for television so shamelessly sentimentalizes and romanticizes death that it makes the living feel they have missed something - just by staying alive.

Being afraid you'll look like a coward is the worst reason for doing anything.

Almost everyone is dying to leave home, eventually; and almost everyone needs to.

Everyone has a right to be a little happy, asshole.