My life and work have been far from free of blemish, and so I think it would be unpardonable for a biographer not to dish up the dirt.

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.

Love while there is a still a blessed possibility to love.

Everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.

Covetousness is both the beginning and the end of the devil's alphabet - the first vice in corrupt nature that moves, and the last which dies.

Point of view is not something I consciously decide. Almost always, when I come up with a plot I find that the point of view has automatically arrived with it, part and parcel of the story.

You have Kurt [Cobain], and he's singing about your experiences. They're our collective experiences.

Not to deny that it is a thinking people's music, but when I listen to music if I ever catch myself thinking, I'm in trouble--I know something is wrong.

Strange medical news from Pakistan: A man had a successful organ transplant with a dog. They gave the man a dog's organ. In a related story today, Keith Richards was seen chasing a mailman.

The history of the past interests us only in so far as it illuminates the history of the present.

You can either be a vain movie star, or you can try to shed some light on different aspects of the human condition.

I appreciate some people enjoy reality TV and enjoy being a part of it - and I do watch it - but it isn't for me.