There's nothing glorious about being a professional. . . . Professionalism probably comes down to being able to work on a bad day.

When I read it ["Tough Guys Don't Dance"], I don't wince, which is all I ever ask for a book I write.

So the blind will lead the blind, and the deaf shout warnings to one another until their voices are lost.

The private terror of the liberal spirit is invariably suicide, not murder.

Along with all else, Sandman is a comic strip for intellectuals, and I say it's about time.

A political convention is after all not a meeting of a corporation's board of directors; it is a fiesta, a carnival, a pig-rooting, horse-snorting, band-playing, voice-screaming medieval get-together of greed, practical lust, compromised idealism, career-advancement, meeting, feud, vendetta, conciliation, of rabble-rousers, fist fights (as it used to be), embraces, drunks (again as it used to be) and collective rivers of animal sweat.

When a novel comes, it's a grace. Something in the cosmos has forgiven you long enough so that you can start.