Fiction is very greedy. It will take all you know and then some. The first novel I tried to write, I was struck by this - the appetite of the blank page for ever more information, ever more data. An empty book is a greedy thing. You are right: You wind up using everything you know, and often more than once.

What is the past, after all, but a vast sheet of darkness in which a few moments, pricked apparently at random, shine?

If you have the guts to be yourself, other people'll pay your price.

The world keeps ending but new people too dumb to know it keep showing up as if the fun's just started.

It's great to have an enemy. Sharpens your senses.

We are each of us like our little blue planet, hung in black space, upheld by nothing but our mutual reassurances, our loving lies.

...but with his mother there's no question of liking him they're not even in a way separate people he began in her stomach and if she gave him life she can take it away and if he feels that withdrawal it will be the grave itself.