As a kid, death seemed boring to me. As an adult, I think that it seems more like a waste of everything. Somebody once said every time a professor dies, a library burns.

May you find your Tower, Roland, and breach it, and may you climb to the top!

Writers write. That's all it is. It is as simple, and as complex, as that.

Only God gets things right the first time.

The kids accepted my drinking as a part of life. Not a particularly pernicious part. I didn't beat up on them. Basically I don't think I was so different from a lot of dads who have three or four martinis when they get in from work, wine with dinner and so on.

I was built with a love of the night and the unquiet coffin.

Reading a good long novel is in many ways like having a long and satisfying affair