No matter how enormous a novel may become, the physical act of reading determines that there's no way it can become a communal experience. To read is intimate. It's almost masturbatory.

I try not to become too regular an addict of any one subculture.

I never take any notes or draw charts or make elaborate diagrams, but I hold an image of the shape of a book in my head and work from that mental hologram.

I've never related to the work geek at all-it sounds much more horrible than nerd. Like a freak biting a chicken's head off in a sideshow.

I learned to write fiction the way I learned to read fiction - by skipping the parts that bored me.

Someday I would change my name to Shut Up and save everybody a lot of time.

I work on a laptop specifically so I can work in cafes and pretend I'm part of the human world.

What age is a black boy when he learns he's scary?

It was only as I wrote about fear that I began to find paths of access to feelings that were intolerable to me then.

I want what we all want," said Carl. "To move certain parts of the interior of myself into the exterior world, to see if they can be embraced.

I can't bear the silent ringing in my skull.

It's ONLY with a NEW MINDSET and a SWIFT Action that you can span the gap between WHO and WHERE you are, and WHO and WHERE/WHAT you want to BE, DO and HAVE

Curiosity may have killed the cat, but paranoia was what tied it up in a sack and buried it in wet concrete.

I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.

Meat is not agreeable to the wise: it has a nauseating odor, it causes a bad reputation, it is food for the carnivorous; I say this, Mahamati, it is not to be eaten.

What is the path? There is no path. On into the unknown.

Golf's Holy Grail - a genius course.

Love obeys no laws other than its own.

For me, the great joy is to watch an audience watching what I've made. To hear not a peep from the audience at the right moment, and then to hear the laughs and the cheers.

Wine does but draw forth a man's natural qualities.

Thought is made in the mouth.