Living in the world of the workshop, which I do as a teacher, you have to be articulate about craft. And that often involves imposing analysis on work that's in a pretty raw state.

I am always interested in characters who are in these kinds of transitional moments in their lives, when it's not clear where they're going to end up. It's interesting territory for fiction.

Even Jack Kerouac, who famously said, "First thought, best thought," benefited from editing. His earliest works are the most edited, and they're the best of his writing.

People make you retract spoken words but they do not understand [know] that speech is a record, so how can anyone retract it?

He didn't have many friends, but he valued his friendship with Angel. She was kind and giving and one of the few women who didn't look at him like he was an un-caged tiger

You and I come by road or rail, but economists travel on infrastructure.

The people who run record companies now wouldn't know a song if it flew up their nose and died. They haven't a clue, and they don't care. You tell them that, and they go, Yeah? So, your point is?

Surgery is always second best. If you can so something else, it’s better. Surgery is limited. It is operating on someone who has no place else to go.

If God can save Paul, He can save anybody. If God could use me, God could use anybody.

But I dig Negroes. I dig them all the way.

Some of the most patriarchal thinkers I know are women. Some of the most feminist thinkers are men.

I don't have a sense of time. Time is timeless to me, and I'm not in a hurry to get older. I mean, if I were worried about time, all the time, it would be terrible.

You put the Set animal in your locker? Do you know how much strength that requires?” “Yeah,” I said. “I was there.