You're never gonna outwrite the movement of the white clouds and the blue sky. You're never going to. There are times when I try to write beautifully, but I don't know if I'm trying to exorcise my own demons. If I am, there are other ones lurking beneath, because they keep coming out. Maybe little by little I'm fumigating.

We're finite creatures, doomed to never get a fraction of what wisdom it would take to deal with infinity. My book has a lot to do with the unbelievable power and beauty of that almost unattainable freedom. Since none of us really gets to know it, we don't know what extremely powerful dangers might lurk in it.

The thing is, the more you fear death, the more you die. So it really doesn't pay off. It's a fear of the dark. Like any experience in life, you wonder, Well, if this ever happens, how would I react? and then it happens, and only then do you know.

I wanted to just get a job so I could have enough money for my own apartment and be able to get drunk. And I did. Back then, on $125, you could do that in Manhattan. I was 19 years old the first time I got published and paid. I think it was a hundred bucks. I stared at my name on the check for 20 minutes.

I don't know if enjoy is the right word for alcohol. I like to drink, but I don't like enforced social drinking. When I don't wanna drink, I don't wanna drink. I haven't had a desire to drink for four months. When I think of the taste of it, no desire. The trouble is the wines I love I can barely afford, which is a great method to cut down on your drinking: Drink only what you can't afford.

How do I start writing a book? I sit there, I come up with an opening line, and then I go little by little. I'll wonder, Well, what's coming? And that goes right through to the very end. For over a dozen years now, I've had a recurring dream where I'm reading a book and the pages are blank, but as I read, the words come to exist as fast as my eyes can move. Strange, strange thing.

I think Elvis Presley will never be solved