Go now. Our journey is done. And may we meet again, in the clearing, at the end of the path.

The age of the book is not over. No way... But maybe the age of some books is over. People say to me sometimes 'Steve, are you ever going to write a straight novel, a serious novel' and by that they mean a novel about college professors who are having impotence problems or something like that. And I have to say those things just don't interest me. Why? I don't know. But it took me about twenty years to get over that question, and not be kind of ashamed about what I do, of the books I write.

After the 9/11 apocalypse happened in New York City, people, particularly New Yorkers, who breathed in the ash, or saw the results of that, have a tendency to keep seeing echoes and having flashbacks to it.

You needn't die happy when your time comes, but you must die satisfied, for you have lived your life from the beginning to the end and ka is always served.

There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good stories seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky.

You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or despair ... Come to it any way but lightly.

God is cruel. Sometimes he makes you live.