Consider the silent repose of the sausage as compared to the aggressiveness of bacon.

Dreams don't come true. Dreams are true.

The gods have chosen to entertain me with chronic eyestrain headaches. Very poisonous episodes. So I don't do a lot of reading anymore except on tape.

I finish the book so I can see how it's going to end. I write that first sentence, and if it's the right first sentence, it leads to the right second sentence and three years later you have a 500-page manuscript, but it really is like going on a trip, going on a journey. It's a voyage.

When we accept bad art because it's good politics, we're killing the swan to feed the chickens.

If you want your tree to produce plenty o' fruit, you've got to cut it back from time to time. Same thing with your neural cells. Some people might call it brain damage. I call it prunin'.

First I think I was interested in the stories, and later on, I became more interested in the language itself, so the stories became almost secondary, but it was kind of a background music for my life.