I do that a lot of authors still do not do is allow people to write directly to me. I get about 50 fan letters a day, and I answer every single one of them myself. It takes a lot of time and sometimes it's a pain in the neck and I answer the same questions over and over. But the truth is these people come to my readings clutching these letters saying, "You wrote me back. I can't believe you wrote me back", and I think it really means a lot for them to know that the author values them just as much as they value the author.

I'm really just a country boy.

Did you eat a lot of paint chips as a child?

Now I'm way into suits that I can put on whether I took a shower or not, and wear barefoot and paint my toes black or whatever color the suit is. It's very cool to wear suits like that. Roll up the sleeves and just say yee-haw.

We can look, but we'd better not touch.

I ran into Axl [Rose] at a club some year ago and told him he's crazy, we all miss them, and he needs to get the band back together.

We need to go back to the way it was 30 years ago, when everybody had Grandma and Grandpa, and we were willing to pass moral judgments about right and wrong.