If being a kid is about learning how to live, then being a grown-up is about learning how to die.

I know life is hard, I think everyone knows that in their hearts, but why dos it have to be cruel, as well? Why does it have to bite?

I believe the first draft of a book — even a long one — should take no more than three months…Any longer and — for me, at least — the story begins to take on an odd foreign feel, like a dispatch from the Romanian Department of Public Affairs, or something broadcast on high-band shortwave duiring a period of severe sunspot activity.

Our memories have voices, too. Often sad ones that clamor like raised arms in the dark.

Research can only present data about the past. No one seriously believes that people's answers to hypothetical questions about the future accurately represent their future behaviour; they merely represent a current attitude, which may or may not be translated into future behaviour.

If you were a real fascistic society and you had a vocal minority that was shouting, "Stop this, stop that, stop the other thing," what you would say is, "Let's give them all the drugs they want." In a lot of states, something very much like that happened. They lowered the drinking age to eighteen and said, "Get juiced."

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.