Every life deserves a certain amount of dignity, no matter how poor or damaged the shell that carries it.

I don't think there's a difference between writing for a newspaper or magazine and doing a chapter in a book.

Like most men, Jimmy Jim was neither all good nor all bad. It is just that when he was bad, gentler people saw in him a disturbing fury. People, a lot them, don't understand fury. They understand anger and even hatred, but fury is one of those old words that have gone out of style. Jimmy Jim Bundrum understood it. It rode his shoulder like a parrot.

I believe that if we are going to write about life and death, we should not do it from the cheap seats.

It is a common condition of being poor...you are always afraid that the good things in your life are temporary, that someone can take them away, because you have no power beyond your own brute strength to stop them.

Every life deserves a certain amount of dignity, no matter how poor or damaged the shell that carries it.

And Sandy Martindale ... dated Elvis before the rhinestone jumpsuits and the drugs, when he was sharp and cool and jagged, like porcelain that has been hurled against a wall.