I wanted a drink. There were a hundred reasons why a man will want a drink, but I wanted one now for the most elementary reason of all. I didn't want to feel what I was feeling, and a voice within was telling me that I needed a drink, that I couldn't bear it without it. But that voice is a liar. You can always bear the pain. It'll hurt, it'll burn like acid in an open wound, but you can stand it. And, as long as you can make yourself go on choosing the pain over the relief, you can keep going.

When you get older, keeping the private stuff private seems less important.

To say I drank my way into marriage isn't much of an exaggeration, and it's none at all to say I drank my way out of it.

The short story, I should point out, is perforce a labor of love in today's literary world; there's precious little economic incentive to write one.

As my late mother famously observed, the one thing to be said for growing old is that every year there are a few more things I don’t have to give a rat’s ass about.

I think persistence in the face of adversity is an essential part of a writer’s job description. If you don’t care enough about it to avoid being easily disheartened that way, you really should be doing something else.

I don't plan an awful lot in life just as I don't plan an awful lot in my fiction.