Art is about eliminating almost everything in order to focus on the thing that you need to talk about.

I try not to become too regular an addict of any one subculture.

I never take any notes or draw charts or make elaborate diagrams, but I hold an image of the shape of a book in my head and work from that mental hologram.

I've never related to the work geek at all-it sounds much more horrible than nerd. Like a freak biting a chicken's head off in a sideshow.

I learned to write fiction the way I learned to read fiction - by skipping the parts that bored me.

Someday I would change my name to Shut Up and save everybody a lot of time.

I work on a laptop specifically so I can work in cafes and pretend I'm part of the human world.

What age is a black boy when he learns he's scary?

It was only as I wrote about fear that I began to find paths of access to feelings that were intolerable to me then.

I want what we all want," said Carl. "To move certain parts of the interior of myself into the exterior world, to see if they can be embraced.

I can't bear the silent ringing in my skull.

Over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.

Let no feeling of discouragement prey upon you, and in the end you are sure to succeed.

I've heard all kinds of crazy rumors about myself. I've even heard that I'm pregnant! I've become real good about laughing things off - I figure I'd better get used to it.

No woman dresses below herself from mere caprice.

All this talk of using tax policy to 'assess social costs'...what a dumb idea. The only way to stop polluters is to put them against walls and shoot them.

Every few years we disappear, Zoey. All our cells are replaced by others. Not a single bit of me is the same as when I was last in this room.

I'm a very, very disciplined person.

As you get older as an animal on the planet, you want to get a little more comfortable, you want to get cozier.

I mostly write short stories. They are best written in a continuous creative process. You have a feel of immediacy.

Great wisdom is generous; petty wisdom is contentious. Great speech is impassioned, small speech cantankerous.