I work with pen and paper. That's my favorite way to write. I love the way the ink sinks into the wood, soaks into the wood pulp. There's something about that process that's so organic.

Heaven is living in your hopes and Hell is living in your fears. It's up to each individual which one he chooses.

White folks have controlled New Orleans with money and guns, black folks have controlled it with magic and music, and although there has been a steady undercurrent of mutual admiration, an intermingling of cultures unheard of in any other American city, South or North; although there has prevailed a most joyous and fascinating interface, black anger and white fear has persisted, providing the ongoing, ostensibly integrated fete champetre with volatile and sometimes violent idiosyncrasies.

Actually, there are countless ways to live upon this tremorous sphere in mirth and good health, and probably only one way - the industrial, urbanized, herding way - to live here stupidly, and man has hit upon that one way.

But the center can be a harmful place for one who has lived so long on the edge.... Normality is the Great Neurosis of civilization.

The moon invented natural rhythm. Civilization uninvented it.

The winter passed as slowly and peacefully as a boa constrictor digesting a valium addict.