The more film I watch, the more John Ford looks like a giant. His politics aren't so good, and you have to learn to accept John Wayne as an actor, but he's a poet in black and white.

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.

If Jesus came back and saw what was going on in his name, he'd never stop throwing-up.

Do you really know yourself so well or are you making it up?' she asks. Some things I concoct, some I glean from my senses, most I thirst for.

What do I sing, and what does my tambourine sing?

Saw Washington Monument. Phallic. Appalling. A national catastrophe.

I think 'ambitious' is one of those adjectives used for women in a derogatory way.

I am a big fan of[Barak] Obama.I'd like to lie on the ground and have him walk over me.

I have the death sentence in seven genres.

The sign read MOUSE PASS GAS Frank: "That's wrong

It's weird. People want you to know that they write. They want you to know they're a musician, rather than making music or making stories. It's the strangest thing.

A stem cell is essentially a blank cell capable of becoming another, more differentiated cell-type in the body, such as a skin cell, a muscle cell or a nerve cell.