I do not kill with my gun; He who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father. I kill with my heart.

Every book you pick up has its own lesson or lessons, and quite often the bad books have more to teach than the good ones.

And if there are no cars or planes, and if no one’s Uncle John is out in the wood lot west of town banging away at a quail or pheasant; if the only sound is the slow beat of your own heart, you can hear another sound, and that is the sound of life winding down to its cyclic close, waiting for the first winter snow to perform last rites.

No one can be as intellectually slothful as a really smart person

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.

Sometimes a cigar is just a smoke and a story's just a story

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