Everybody wants to psychoanalyze horror. They don't want to psychoanalyze a book like Gay Talese's "Sex with Your Neighbor" [sic] or something like that. It's pretty much accepted that Americans should be interested in who they're diddling and how they're doing it.

...it was more like bleeding than crying.

Mornings belong to whatever is new; the current composition. Afternoons are for naps and letters.

It's best to have your tools with you. If you don't, you're apt to find something you didn't expect and get discouraged.

I understand from my own work that haste makes waste. But I also understand that ... the creative spark dims, and then death puts it out. William Shakespeare, for instance, hasn’t produced a new play for 400 years. That, my friends, is a long dry spell.

We're news junkies in my house.

You learn best by reading a lot and writing a lot, and the most valuable lessons of all are the ones you teach yourself.