I certainly wanted to write a book that was honest about New Orleans without explaining it to death, so much so that the first draft contained references absolutely incomprehensible to anyone who hasn't lived here for several years.

If you're a freelance writer and aren't used to being ignored, neglected, and generally given short shrift, you must not have been in the business very long.

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!

They discovered that even in the face of pain that seems unbearable, even in the face of pain that wrings the last drop of blood out of your heart and leaves its scrimshaw tracery on the inside of your skull, life goes on. And pain grows dull, and begins to fade

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

Why bother? I was right all along: the second you make yourself vulnerable to someone, they start drawing blood.

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.