I was trying not to be happy, hopeful. I did not believe I deserved happiness or even hope, if you knew my soul.

For what is delusion but the prelude to hurt. And what is hurt but the prelude to rage.

And this is the forbidden truth, the unspeakable taboo - that evil is not always repellent but frequently attractive; that it has the power to make of us not simply victims, as nature and accident do, but active accomplices.

These novels [Zombie, My Sister, My Love] are so special to me. [I don't expect that they will have nearly the same significance to anyone else.] They represent a kind of fiction I would love to pursue more or less constantly, but dare not.

I don't think that any 'ism' is higher than literature or art. So I'm a formalist. I greatly honor and respect the form of a work.

Ambitious, absorbing, and poignantly moving.

For what are the words with which to summarize a lifetime, so much crowded confused happiness terminated by such stark slow-motion pain?