I think the only person a writer has an obligation to is himself. If what I write doesn't fulfill something in me, if I don't honestly feel it's the best I can do, then I'm miserable.

I always write the end of everything first. I always write the last chapters of my books before I write the beginning....Then I go back to the beginning. I mean, it's always nice to know where you're going is my theory.

Mick Jagger moves like a parody between a majorette girl and Fred Astaire.

Hot weather opens the skull of a city, exposing its white brain, and its heart of nerves, which sizzle like the wires inside a lightbulb. And there exudes a sour extra-human smell that makes the very stone seem flesh-alive, webbed and pulsing.

I'll pay you a million dollars if you tell your life story for true.

All human life has its seasons and cycles, and no one's personal chaos can be permanent. Winter, after all, gives way to spring and summer, though sometimes when branches stay dark and the earth cracks with ice, one thinks they will never come, that spring, and that summer, but they do, and always.

He’d always been willing to confess his faults, for, by admitting them, it was as if he made them no longer exist.