The ordeal is part of the commitment" Esquire Interview 10/10

The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress.

I cannot and do not live in the world of discretion, not as a writer, anyway. I would prefer to, I assure you - it would make life easier. But discretion is, unfortunately, not for novelists.

He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach - that it makes no sense.

You can no more make someone tell the truth than you can force someone to love you.

Old age isn't a battle; old age is a massacre.

The horror of being caged has lost its thrill.

Everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all that noise.

I have a slogan I use when I get anxious writing, which happens quite a bit: ‘the ordeal is part of the commitment.’ It’s one of my mantras. It makes a lot of things doable.

When the whole world doesn't believe in God, it'll be a great place.

Because that is when you love somebody - when you see them being game in the face of the worst. Not courageous. Not heroic. Just game.

So I draw because I feel like it might be my only real chance to escape the reservation.

All reviews should carry a Surgeon General's warning. The good ones turn your head, the bad ones break your heart.

Excusations, cessions, modesty itself well governed, are but arts of ostentation.

Telling people how to be creative is easy - being creative is difficult.

Not to be a Bible-thumper, but there really is nothing new under the sun.

It would require constant vigilance to not replace each person with my own fictional version of them.

Certainly, no church should be involved in trying to set the affairs of the nation.

He who is doing his true will is assisted by the momentum of the universe.

Twenty-five million veterans are living among us today. These men and women selflessly set aside their civilian lives to put on the uniform and serve us.

I believe in nothing.