I suddenly understood that if every moment of a book should be taken seriously, then every moment of a life should be taken seriously as well.

I believe in any kid's ability to read any book and form their own judgements. It's the job of a parent to guide his/her child through the reading of every book imaginable. Censorship of any form punishes curiosity.

How self-centered, how arrogant... Imagine the awesome privilege of living in a society where you get to choose what you eat at each and every meal. When I was a kid, I was a vegetarian and a vegan for long stretches... I was a commodity cheese-atarian.

Every Indian kid has access to MySpace and Facebook. But that doesn't mean they have access to books and great teachers. This idea about bringing digital tech into schools is great, but once again I'll say that this is not how people actually learn.

I write less about alcohol, less and less and less. You 're an addict - so of course you write about the thing you love most. I loved alcohol the most, loved it more than anybody or anything. That's what I wrote about. And it certainly accounted for some great writing. But it accounted for two or three years of good writing - it would never account for 20 years of good writing. I would have turned into Charles Bukowski. He wrote 10,000 poems and 10 of them were great.

Do you know why the Indian rain dances always worked? Because the Indians would keep dancing until it rained.

I was studying the sky like I was an astronomer, except it was daytime and I didn't have a telescope, so I was just an idiot.