You hold onto what you have; you do not give it up easily, even when you know it is poisoning you.

If you find yourself imitating another writer, that doesn't have to be a bad thing, especially if you are a young or a new writer. However, you should be conscious of exactly how you are imitating him - word choice, sentence structure, motifs? - and think about why you're doing it.

You can only maintain an immensely gothic attitude for so long before either killing yourself or beginning to feel like a poser.

Yeah, I think A Confederacy of Dunces is probably the perfect New Orleans book.

In the Netherlands I read the first chapter of Exquisite Corpse to an audience that laughed in all the places I thought were funny - an experience I've never had in America!

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

Celebrities, even insignificant ones like me, are created to be abused by the Great Unwashed.