When people say they write for themselves, that's probably what they do. I will admit that I don't write for myself; I write to be read. I've got the reader in my mind all the time.

And he did see--that life was rotten, that there were no heroes, really, and that you couldn't trust anybody, not even yourself.

When I write, I never think of segments as chapters; I think of them as scenes. I always visualize them in my mind. Then I try to get the scene down on paper as closely as I can. That's the one thing that readers don't see - what you have in your mind. The reader can only see what you get on the page.

The possibility that hope comes out of hopelessness and that the opposite of things carry the seeds of birth - love out of hate, good out of evil. Didn't flowers grow out of dirt?

It doesn't matter how big the body, it's what you do with it.

I sometimes get tired because I can seldom read a book for pleasure. I'm like the play reviewer who happens to go to a play on an off day and can't help but view it critically.

A writer must take risks, defy the odds, be a bit obsessed and a little mad.