I'm a situational writer. You give me a situation, like a writer gets in a car crash, breaks his leg, is kidnapped by his number-one fan, and is kept in a cabin and forced to write a book - everything else springs from there. You really don't have to work once you've had the idea. All you have to do is kind of take dictation from something inside.

Life isn't a support system for art. It's the other way around.

A dimwit thinks nothing is funny unless it's mean.

The low bird is not picked tenderly out of the dust by its fellows; rather, it is dispatched quickly and without mercy.

And poets, in my view, and I think the view of most people, do speak God's language - it's better, it's finer, it's language on a higher plane than ordinary people speak in their daily lives.

Grammar is...the pole you grab to get your thoughts up on their feet and walking.

You want to remember that while you're judging the book, the book is also judging you.