To an artist a metaphor is as real as a dollar.

You knows dat in New Orleans is not morning 'til dee sun come up.

It's good to bear in mind that like it or not, enlightenment has always been, even in a golden age, pretty much limited to an elite.

In fiction, when you paint yourself into a corner, you can write a pair of suction cups onto the bottoms of your shoes and walk up the wall and out the skylight and see the sun breaking through the clouds. In nonfiction, you don't have that luxury.

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.

Bland writing - timid, antiseptic, vanilla writing - is nearly as unhealthy as the brutal and dark. Instead of sipping, say, elixir, nectar, tequila, or champagne, the reader is invited to slurp lumpy milk or choke on the author's dust bunnies.

The beet is the most intense of vegetables