(Chicago is) the only major city in the country where you can easily buy your way out of a murder rap.

The only way I could finish a book and get a plot was just to keep making it longer until something happens.

He was falling between glacial walls, he didn't know how anyone could fall so far away from everyone else in the world. So far to fall, so cold all the way, so steep and dark between those morphine-coloured walls.

To literary critics a book is assumed to be guilty until it proves itself innocent.

And never, ever, no matter what else you do in your whole life, never sleep with anyone whose troubles are worse than your own.

I went out there for a thousand a week, and I worked Monday, and I got fired Wednesday. The guy that hired me was out of town Tuesday.

(Chicago is) the only major city in the country where you can easily buy your way out of a murder rap.