Most contemporary fiction sucks. It's intellectually dishonest, often morally dishonest. It's cheap and easy. It pretends to be deep but is really quite shallow.

Most people who are HIV positive are on drugs and that gets their viral load so low that it's harder to transmit it. Most new infections come from people who don't know they're infected.

Your past comes with you no matter where you go.

Sometimes when we think we’re protecting ourselves, we’re really hurting ourselves. And sometimes the people around us too.

I'm a novelist. I think fiction is important or I wouldn't be doing it, but most of it's bad.

Writing fiction is fundamentally an irrational act.

Don't come to New York until you've finished a book. It's too expensive. You'll never write anything. You'll spend all your time working to pay the rent.

One night I had a dream and woke up and wrote down the dream. That was my first short story. The dream was a kind of fantasy of me getting revenge on my father.

AIDS was one of those diseases that a lot of people tried to claim ownership over, and especially as someone who was, fortunately never HIV positive, I wanted to avoid any appearance of doing that.

Losing my virginity was very boring.

Art is only great if it's uncodifiable. If art isn't scaring you, if it's not making you upset, then I don't think it's actually doing anything.

A man has a hard time feeling fulfilled when he lives a life that does not serve a purpose that is more than himself.

When a woman knows she cannot attain her worldly love, she gives it an eternal form.

Life is a mansion of opportunity: love is the key.

A cowardly act! What do I care about that? You may be sure that I should never fear to commit one if it were to my advantage.

Our obligation to the world is, primarily, our obligation to our own future. Obviously, we cannot develop beyond a certain point unless other nations develop, too.

Hence, in these times, untouch'd the pages lie, And slumber out their immortality.

Freedom lies outside the pattern of society; but to be free of that pattern you have to understand the whole content of it, which is to understand your own mind.

I'm smiled out, talked out, quipped out, socialized so far from any being, I need the weight of mortal silences to get realized back into myself.

If I read a scary story in the newspaper, I find I'm haunted by it.

You don't waste your entire life waiting to go back to dust.