I think that one of the compelling themes of fiction is this confrontation between good and evil.

Most books, like their authors, are born to die; of only a few books can it be said that death has no dominion over them; they live, and their influence lives forever.

A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.

It's fine therapy for people who are perpetually scared of nameless threats as I am most of the time — for jittery people.

I get a fine warm feeling when I'm doing well, but that pleasure is pretty much negated by the pain of getting started each day. Let's face it, writing is hell.

Mysteriously and in ways that are totally remote from natural experience, the gray drizzle of horror induced by depression takes on the quality of physical pain.

The writer's duty is to keep on writing.

Reading - the best state yet to keep absolute loneliness at bay.

The pain is unrelenting; one does not abandon, even briefly, one's bed of nails, but is attached to it wherever one goes.

It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul.

The pain of severe depression is quite unimaginable to those who have not suffered it.

If everything is mission, nothing is mission.

Thank God we're living in a country where the sky's the limit, the stores are open late and you can shop in bed thanks to television.

The mere habit of writing, of constantly keeping at it, of never giving up, ultimately teaches you how to write.

America is one of the few places where the failure to promote oneself is widely regarded as arrogance.

If you feel weak, limited, ordinary, you are the best material through which God can work.

Indians scattered on dawn's highway bleeding/Ghosts crowd the young child's fragile eggshell mind.

You must do right before you feel good.

My father had a Super 8 camera when I was a kid and sometimes he would use it. I did some animation with it. I did a lot of flipbooks.

I know what it's like to win things. You need a certain type of player with a determination to win. You see it in the eyes.

You can play golf with liberals, be neighbors with them, go out to dinner. I just don't want them in power.