If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered.

Sometimes stories cry out to be told in such loud voices that you write them just to shut them up.

Kill if you will, but command me nothing!

Of course when you were running with the bottom dogs, what you mostly saw were paws, claws, and assholes.

Want a Coke?” Abra asked. “Sugar solves lots of problems, that’s what I think.

Some of this book—perhaps too much—has been about how I learned to do it. Much of it has been about how you can do it better. The rest of it—and perhaps the best of it—is a permission slip: you can, you should, and if you're brave enough to start, you will. Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. Drink and be filled up.

And people who don’t dream, who don’t have any kind of imaginative life, they must… they must go nuts. I can’t imagine that.