I don't want to indulge myself in the luxury of writing beautiful paragraphs just for the sake of making beautiful writing. That doesn't interest me. I want everything to be essential.

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.

If you don't remove your hands immediately, I will render you unable to biologically maintain life.

I’d do anything for you.” And she knew he meant it. “Even before you healed me, you gave my life back, a reason for living. I adore you, I worship you. I love you beyond all reason.

The prince of darkness is a gentleman!

I would like to have nothing to do with you for hours on end and then come back and find you, come back with things I’ve thought and found all on my own— on my own, not through you.

May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.

A woman's suffering is never above half known, for the fact of the publicity of her wrongs is counted to her for disgrace.

I think the writer has to be responsible to signs and dreams. If you don't do anything with it, you lose it.

Buddha renounced every worldly happiness because he wanted to share with the whole world his happiness which was to be had by men who sacrificed and suffered in the search for truth.

Sometimes, when you do the music for a play, there are very clear boundaries as to what needs to be achieved. You're very much a little cog in a much bigger machine.

I'm never going to be Tolstoy.