Louisiana in September was like an obscene phone call from nature. The air - moist, sultry, secretive, and far from fresh - felt as if it were being exhaled into one's face. Sometimes it even sounded like heavy breathing.

What an electric heater perched upon the rim of the bathtub of the world that dead Jesus was.

Those who possess wisdom cannot just ladle it out to every wantwit and jackanapes who comes along and asks for it. A person must be prepared to receive wisdom, or else it will do him more harm than good. Moreover, a lout thrashing about in the clear waters of wisdom will dirty those waters for everyone else.

If you take any activity, any art, any discipline, any skill-take it and push it as far as it will go, push it beyond where it has ever been before, push it to the wildest edges of edges, then you force it into the realm of magic.

I've sucked way too much cement for this year. Bad juju rising off them city sidewalks. I need to babble with a brook or two, inhale starlight, make friends with some trees.

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.

There are many things worth living for, a few things worth dying for, and nothing worth killing for.