The idea that the creative endeavor and mind-altering substances are entwined is one of the great pop-intellectual myths of our time. Substance abusing writers are just substance abusers — common garden variety drunks and druggies, in other words. Any claims that the drugs and alcohol are necessary to dull a finer sensibility are just the usual self-serving bullshit. I've heard alcoholic snowplow drivers make the same claim, that they drink to still the demons.

It was like drowning, only from the inside out.

I don't want to go to the heaven that I learned about when I was a kid. To me, it seems boring.

Do you know how cruel your God can be, David. How fantastically cruel?...Sometimes he makes us live.

When I gave up dope and alcohol, my immediate feeling was 'I've saved my life, but there'll be a price because I'll have nothing that buzzes me any more'. But I enjoyed my kids. My wife loved me and I loved her. And eventually the writing came back and I discovered that the writing was enough. Stupid thing is that probably it always had been.

Battles that last five minutes spawn legends that live a thousand years.

Reading is the creative center of a writer's life." -