The wonder is that so many OCDs manage to live productive lives, just the same. They work, they eat (often not enough or too much, it's true), they go to the movies, they make love to their girlfriends and boyfriends, their wives and husbands... and all the time those birds are there, clinging to them and pecking away little bits of flesh.

There was a beautiful feeling of calm in my groin, a sense of peace so remarkable it was almost ecstasy——anyone who' suffered bad pain and then recovered will know what I'm talking about.

Death, but not for you, gunslinger. Never for you. You darkle. You tinct. May I be brutally frank? You go on.

When asked, "How do you write?" I invariably answer, "One word at a time," and the answer is invariably dismissed. But that is all it is. It sounds too simple to be true, but consider the Great Wall of China, if you will: one stone at a time, man. That's all. One stone at a time. But I've read you can see that motherfucker from space without a telescope.

The quickest way to learn about a new place is to know what it dreams of.

I think you're a taker. You've always been one. It's like God left some part of you out when He built you inside of me.

Dead fields under a November sky, scattered rose petals brown and turning up at the edges, empty pools scummed with algae, rot, decomposition, dust.