Art Gropes. It stalks like a hunter lost in the woods, listening to itself and to everything around it, unsure of itself, waiting to pounce.

Self pity is easily the most destructive of the non-pharmaceutical narcotics; it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality.

Talking, talking. Spinning a web of words, pale walls of dreams, between myself and all I see.

We read five words on the first page of a really good novel and we begin to forget that we are reading printed words on a page; we begin to see images.

What art ought to do is tell stories which are moment-by-moment wonderful, which are true to human experience, and which in no way explain human experience.

The citizen can bring our political and governmental institutions back to life, make them responsive and accountable, and keep them honest. No one else can.

Fiction does not spring into the world fully grown, like Athena. It is the process of writing and rewriting that makes a fiction original, if not profound.

Art, of course, is a way of thinking, a way of mining reality.

As a rule of thumb I say, if Socrates, Jesus and Tolstoy wouldn't do it, don't.

When people are serving, life is no longer meaningless.

One of the many interesting challenges nature presents us is its apparent disinterest in maintaining the order humans crave.

To the immature, other people are not real.

Women are attracted to bad boys not because they want to fall in love… we just want to ride on the backs of their motor bikes.

Instead of an unhinged lunatic you may glimpse a punctured soul-a mere human being like you.

Few things are less comforting than a tiger who's up too late.

The only thing major labels can really offer is money.

I always loved smokestack industry, and I love towns or cities that have grown up around factories.

Art Education is as important for a realist artist as an Alphabet is to learn a language.

I've often met people who are terrified, you know, in a straight jacket of their own making because they'd rather do anything that fail. They don't want to try for fear of failing.

You could do math early, but there are no brilliant 16-year-old novelists. They don't know the human condition yet.

No one is talking about occupying Iraq for five to ten years.