The secret to writing is just to write. Write every day. Never stop writing. Write on every surface you see; write on people on the street. When the cops come to arrest you, write on the cops. Write on the police car. Write on the judge. I'm in jail forever now, and the prison cell walls are completely covered with my writing, and I keep writing on the writing I wrote. That's my method.

Where does contagion end and art begin?

You can't run away from home without destroying somebody's world.

You play your cards so close to your chest," said Shadow, "that I'm not even sure they're really cards at all.

You are young, and in love. Every young man in your position is the most miserable young man who ever lived.

Sometimes I suspect that we build our traps ourselves, then we back into them, pretending amazement the while.

There are stories that are true, in which each individual's tale is unique and tragic, and the worst of the tragedy is that we have heard it before, and we cannot allow ourselves to feel it to deeply. We build a shell around it like an oyster dealing with a painful particle of grit, coating it with smooth pearl layers in order to cope. This is how we walk and talk and function, day in, day out, immune to others' pain and loss. If it were to touch us it would cripple us or make saints of us; but, for the most part, it does not touch us. We cannot allow it to.