I like visiting peoples homes on Saint Josephs Day, when people set up altars, serve food as a tribute to the saint, and invite the public - I enjoy that much more than Mardi Gras.

New Orleans cuisine is Creole rather than Cajun.

In the Netherlands I read the first chapter of Exquisite Corpse to an audience that laughed in all the places I thought were funny - an experience I've never had in America!

The night is the hardest time to be alive and 4am knows all my secrets.

You hold onto what you have; you do not give it up easily, even when you know it is poisoning you.

You can only maintain an immensely gothic attitude for so long before either killing yourself or beginning to feel like a poser.

Some nights are made for torture, or reflection, or the savoring of loneliness.

I can't heal your pain but I can see it. And you don't have to be lost. Not forever.

Young writers shouldn't be afraid of striving to emulate their favorites. It's a good way to learn, as long as you move on from it and don't publish too many of the results.

Never relinquish your terrors. That's when they catch you.

Ive tried to avoid labels, but they always find you.

I look at you, and I think about you, and ... I don't know. No one has ever confounded me the way you do.

Though the wind was commanding the sand into even ridges, it couldn't control the sea.

The welfare state is the oldest con game in the world. First you take people's money away quietly and then you give some of it back to them flamboyantly.

You can't think and act like a victim and expect victory.

Happiness is not the same as pleasure. Pleasure is an immediate experience, very transient in nature, that's enjoyable, and if we experience a great deal of it - there's a sense of satiation.

Everybody lives an epic.

Like the intense fire that transforms iron into steel, as we remain faithful during the fiery trial of our faith, we are spiritually refined and strengthened.

People who don't read books a lot are threatened by books.

Harvard created wonderful conditions for me as a writerbut the writing was done, almost entirely, when I got home.

Every time a woman leaves off something she looks better, but every time a man leaves off something he looks worse.