The moon invented natural rhythm. Civilization uninvented it.

Very few people can write in a crowd. This is a very solitary occupation. I have known people more talented than me who never made it. And the primary reason was always that they couldn't stand to be alone for several hours a day. Any writer worth anything has mastered the art. The art of solitude.

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.

A child's mind is its living room; it's is going to be residing there for the rest of its earthly existence.

I like to think of myself as a fiction writer who liked art enough to write about it for a while, and then went on to his fiction.

People aren't trees, so it is false when they speak of roots.

It was autumn, the springtime of death.