Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it.

What we want most is to be held...and told..that everything (everything is a funny thing, is baby milk and papa's eyes, is roaring logs on a cold morning, is hoot owls and the boy who makes you cry after school, is mama's long hair, is being afraid and twisted faces on the bedroom wall)...is going to be alright.

Are the dead as lonesome as the living?

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 like to talk on TV about those things that aren't worth writing about.

I don't mean I'd mind being rich and famous. That's very much on my schedule and someday I'll try to get around to it.

Are there any writers on the literary scene whom I consider truly great? Yes: Truman Capote.