Conformity is inevitable when folks huddle together in rebellion.

Literature boils with the madcap careers of writers brought to the edge by the demands of living on their nerves, wringing out their memories and their nightmares to extract meaning, truth, beauty.

The steady pressure to consume, absorb, participate, receive, by eye, ear, mouth, and mail involves a cruelty to intestines, blood pressure, and psyche unparalleled in history.

Catastrophe and desire are linked in our lives as the moon is linked to that reflected light from the sun which enables the eye to see it.

Being a writer is a rather hazardous occupation and there is a horribly high rate of writers who barely have the money for the paper and pen they use for their craft.

The would-bees take their honey from the flowers of creation.

The fact that all of us die anyway (the rumor turns out to be true) is a mere detail in the celestial glow of imagination. The artist's eyes destroy death.

Isolation from power makes men look for a mob in which they can be strong.

The magic will which makes us see the other side of our natures-dream and disaster, catastrophe and fulfillment-is the great permanent challenge of humanity.

If mankind is naturally good, he is sure going against his nature more and more of the time. It sounds like a bad joke: the paranoids are after us.

With short stories, the story-teller must have a story to tell, not merely some sweet prose to take out for a walk

There is nothing more important than your eternal salvation.

Look at Jessica Simpson. She's famous for being dumb. I guess it started with Marylyn Monroe, and she actually wasn't that dumb, but that's how she was perceived - and that's what got popular.

Investing for the poor requires participation from the entire community.

Death persecutes before it executes.

The distinction between what is real and what is imaginary is not one that can be finely maintained ... all existing thing are ... imaginary.

The only really good piece of advice I have for my students is, 'Write something you'd never show your mother or father. And you know what they say? I could never do that!'

You have to be the parent; you can't be their friend.

Sense of family is enormously important to me. In the larger sense, we're all of us family; we're all of us soulmates.

There is a poignancy in all things clear, In the stare of the deer, in the ring of a hammer in the morning. Seeing a bucket of perfectly lucid water We fall to imagining prodigious honesties.

Too many people write books as a calling card.