I know your mother lives in your head - almost everyone's mother does, I guess - but you can't let her have her way on this one

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.

Only library books speak with such wordless eloquence of the power good stories hold over us.

In the end we always wear out our worries. That’s what Wireman says.

Hug and kiss whoever helped get you - financially, mentally, morally, emotionally - to this day. Parents, mentors, friends, teachers. If you're too uptight to do that, at least do the old handshake thing, but I recommend a hug and a kiss. Don't let the sun go down without saying thank you to someone, and without admitting to yourself that absolutely no one gets this far alone.

They say that loving eyes can never see, but that's a fool's axiom. Sometimes, they see too much

When asked, 'How do you write?' I invariably answer, 'one word at a time.'