The older you get, the more you live with ghosts.

The difference of human being behind the guy on the page is in writing, I'm no longer conscious of personal repercussions because for that moment they don't exist. At times, I tell myself, Well, I can always go back and change that or take it out, and I find out that I rarely do. Couple little things here and there: Do unto others. Be a good scout. With all the ironies that entails, I go by that. That's a good way to live.

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.

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 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 think the tendency with parents is to make your kid not unlike the next kid but to overprotect and say, "My way's better than whatever you've got in mind." But by the time that tie's over that shoulder and they're drinking that obligatory brewski with the boys, it's like, Man, who are you people?

You got guys that are so old, you see them eating lunch, the drool's just coming from their mouth, and they're sending around memos about 10 percent crosscuts. If I had one tenth of their money, I would be free. They don't know what freedom is. It's a disease. You're one of the rare people that is given freedom, and what do you do with it? You don't live. You choose to be dead in life. Money buys freedom. I mean why is this guy with the slobber worried about taking food off other people's tables? His $19 billion won't get him from where he is to the grave comfortably? That to me is a disease.