Writing was bad for the soul when you got right down to it. It protected your worst tendencies. Narrowed everything to failure and its devastations. Gave your cunning an edge of treachery and your jellyfish heart a reason to fall deeper into silence.

Army ants have discipline, Bill said. Don't ask me what writers have.

words stick even as lives fly apart.

Any curly-haired boy can write windswept ballads. You have to crush people's heads. That's the only way to make those fuckers listen.

I don't know what I think about certain subjects, even today, until I sit down and try to write about them.

Writing is a concentrated form of thinking.

Writing is a form of personal freedom. It frees us from the mass identity we see in the making all around us.

Writing is a concentrated form of thinking...a young writer sees that with words he can place himself more clearly into the world. Words on a page, that's all it takes to help him separate himself from the forces around him, streets and people and pressures and feelings. He learns to think about these things, to ride his own sentences into new perceptions.

In my experience, writing a novel tends to create its own structure, its own demands, its own language, its own ending.