I've always loved science fiction. I think the smartest writers are science fiction writers dealing with major things.

HBO and I have a deal to at least try to make a television series from the Leonid McGill stories. We're going to start with the first novel, 'The Long Fall.'

It’s hard for a man to understand a woman because a man just desires her; but women, most of them anyway, desire desire.

People are so afraid of dying that they don’t even live the little bit of life they have.

The law is a flexible thing – on both sides of the line – influenced by circumstance, character, and, of course, wealth or lack of same.

I’m writing, I’m using language, I’m using that language to tell stories and even more so to get ideas across. And I just love that, and I’ve always loved that.

It’s a disheartening feeling when you can’t stand the touch of someone but neither can you push them away.

Freedom for us has always been dangerous. Freedom for us has been a crime as far back as our oldest memories. And so whenever we’re feeling liberation we know that there’s somebody nearby with a rope and a collar, a shotgun and a curse.

I thought I recognized him but most cops blended into one brutal fist for me after a while.

If everybody in the world despises you and hates you, sees your features as ugly and simian, makes jokes about your ways of talking, calls you stupid and beneath contempt; if you have no history, no heroes, and no future where a hero might lead, then you might begin to hate yourself... And then one hot summer’s night you just erupt and go burning and shooting and nobody seems to know why.