The moment a man begins to talk about technique that's proof that he is fresh out of ideas.

There is something about the literary life that repels me, all this desperate building of castles on cobwebs, the long-drawn acrimonious struggle to make something important which we all know will be gone forever in a few years, the miasma of failure which is to me almost as offensive as the cheap gaudiness of popular success.

The coffee shop smell was strong enough to build a garage on.

The law isn't justice. It's a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons and are also lucky, justice may show up in the answer. A mechanism is all the law was ever intended to be.

Technique alone is never enough. You have to have passion. Technique alone is just an embroidered potholder.

He snorted and hit me in the solar plexus. I bent over and took hold of the room with both hands and spun it. When I had it nicely spinning I gave it a full swing and hit myself on the back of the head with the floor.

Some days I feel like playing it smooth. Some days I feel like playing it like a waffle iron.