You can see the goldenrod, that most tenacious and pernicious and beauteous of all New England flora, bowing away from the wind like a great and silent congregation.

Weird love's better than no love at all.

They're animals, all right. But why are you so goddam sure that makes us human beings?

For a moment he felt a wild hope: perhaps this really was a nightmare. Perhaps he would awake in his own bed, bathed in sweat, shaking, maybe even crying . . . but alive. Safe. Then he pushed the thought away. Its charm was deadly, its comfort fatal.

The writer must have a good imagination to begin with, but the imagination has to be muscular, which means it must be exercised in a disciplined way, day in and day out, by writing, failing, succeeding and revising.

If you can't laugh when things go bad--laugh and put on a little carnival--then you're either dead or wishing you were.

It's strange how pain marks our faces, and makes us look like family.