That isn't writing at all, it's typing.

all his prayers of the past had been simple concrete requests: God, give me a bicycle, a knife with seven blades, a box of oil paints. Only how, how, could you say something so indefinite, so meaningless as this: God, let me be loved.

Some prisons don't allow guitar because the strings can be detached and used as weapons.

I used to spend all of my time projecting. I was never in the moment. It was always tomorrow or next week or two months from now. That was one of the reasons I always had this sense of anxiety.

One day, I started writing, not knowing that I had chained myself for life to a noble but merciless master. When God hands you a gift, he also hands you a whip; and the whip is intended solely for self-flagellation... I'm here alone in my dark madness, all by myself with my deck of cards - and, of course, the whip God gave me.

I've got something inside of me, peasantlike and stubborn, and I'm in it till the end of the race.

you got to want it to be good, and I don't want it.