All abilities are paid for with disabilities. perfect health may entail the heavy toll of bovine stupidity. insight into one area involves blind spots in another.

A writer does not own words any more than a painter owns colors. So lets dispense with this originality fetish… Look, listen and transcribe and forget about being original.

Cheat your landlord if you can -- and must -- but do not try to shortchange the Muse.

Build a good name. Keep your name clean. Don't make compromises. Don't worry about making a bunch of money or being successful. Be concerned with doing good work and make the right choices and protect your work. And if you can build a good name, eventually, that name will be its own currency.

I don't go into hysterics or anything, but I look around for something to smash it with. I used to live out in the country when I first moved here, and there were a lot of centipedes in the house, and I set out to kill them all. A program of genocide. I'd wake up in the middle of the night, and I'd know there's a centipede in this room. And there always was. And I couldn't go to sleep until I killed it.

Language is a virus from outer space.

The nonconformist here may be "beat down" by life but still has a beauty in his or her longing for freedom and for an awakening of the mind.