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.

I don't really think of writing as a career. It's something that happened to me. By working harder than I knew it was possible to work, I have become passable at it.

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.

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

The actual American childhood is less Norman Rockwell and Walt Disney than Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe.

Writers often write their best when they are feeling their worst

Death is terrifying because it is so ordinary. It happens all the time.