Our [western] culture embraces sex addiction. If I drink too much or rack up credit-card debt or lose the rent in Vegas, that's bad. But if I have many lovers, that's good.

I think 12-step programs really work, rehab really works, certain types of therapies and talking to other addicts really work. There are a lot of things that work - that isn't the problem. The problem is getting the addicts to say they're addicts. The problem is admitting it.

Addiction isnt about substance - you arent addicted to the substance, you are addicted to the alteration of mood that the substance brings.

There were a number of books about Bill Wilson, and by him, but a lot of the basic biographical tasks had not been done.

All writers have strengths and weaknesses. I am terrified of being boring, so I write short, compressed stories that sometimes don't give a reader time to think about what they have read. I struggle to slow down.

Obsession is so extreme and so hard to imagine with the rational mind that it has a science-fiction-like quality to it-it's almost as if the obsessed one has been taken over by a replica, a pod, a facsimile of the rational person.

A wedding isn't for the bride and groom, it's for the family and friends. The B. and G. are just props, silly stick figures with no more significance than the pink and white candy figures on the top of the cake.