Even then, at nine years old, I wanted to live inside her body. I wanted to melt into her bones - THAT kind of love.

But the thing about remembering is that you don't forget.

With a hangover and with fear, it is difficult to put a helmet on your head.

They carried the sky. The whole atmosphere, they carried it, the humidity, the monsoons, the stink of fungus and decay, all of it, they carried gravity.

Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to.

Fiction is the lie that helps us understand the truth.

I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth.

[Y]ou can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil.

Laughter does not deny pain. Laughter - like a wail - acknowledges and replies to pain.

Why do our politicians put warnings on cigarette packs and not on their own foreheads?

It's a hard thing to explain to somebody who hasn't felt it, but the presence of death and danger has a way of bringing you fully awake. It makes things vivid.

Christianity is a daily supernatural experience with your Father God not a setof rules

The infant New York Times boasted that no newspaper printing what was really worth reading ever perished for lack of readers.

To me, the stand up part in my life is great. I know I can do that. When I get an acting chance, I'm really thrilled.

The objective is to enlarge the scope of your advantage which can only happen at someone else's expense.

You are safe," he said firmly. "You have my name and my family, my clan, and if necessary, the protection of my body as well. The man willna lay hands on ye again, while I live.

To say, "Well, I write when I really get into it" is a bunch of bull. Put the paper in the typewriter, stare at it a long time, get snowblindness if you have to, but write something.

My hatred is diamond-hard.

I think it's very important that whatever you're trying to make or sell or teach has to be basically good. A bad product and you know what? You won't be here in ten years.

Those things that are dearest to us have cost us the most.

Crimes, sins, nightmares, hunks of hair: it was surprising how many of them has something to dispose of. The more I charged, the easier it was for them to breathe freely once more.