The night is the hardest time to be alive and 4am knows all my secrets.

My dad told me that no one could ever make it as a writer, that my chances were equivalent to winning the lottery - which was good for me, because I like to have something to prove.

I can't heal your pain but I can see it. And you don't have to be lost. Not forever.

My childhood may have been more demented than most, because I learned to read very early and was allowed to read whatever I wanted.

Delete nothing. Move nothing. Change nothing. Learn everything.

If you want something, you don't wait for the world to deal it out for you. You take it.

In France, for instance, one magazine writer was convinced that On The Road had been a huge influence on Lost Souls and was crushed to learn that I hadn't read the one until after I'd written the other.