New York is an ugly city, a dirty city... But there is one thing about it. Once you have lived in New York and it has become your home, no place else is good enough.

Why on earth should I care whether people read me with their eyes or their ears?

It's the easiest thing in the world to know God's will. You just wait and see what happens, and that's it.

If you cannot stand a spoon upright in the cup, then the coffee is too weak.

One thing that helps is to give myself permission to write badly. I tell myself that I'm going to do my five or 10 pages no matter what, and that I can always tear them up the following morning if I want. I'll have lost nothing-writing and tearing up five pages would leave me no further behind than if I took the day off.

Everybody's weird, fundamentally everybody is a snap. Sometimes it's a sexual thing and sometimes it's a different kind of weirdness, but one way or another everybody's nuts.

Stories are like assholes. Everybody's got one and most of 'em stink.