Get A Day Job, Make Your Money

Don't Start An Argument With Somebody Who Has A Microphone When You Don't. They'll Make You Look Like Chopped Liver.

Writing Is The Hardest Work In The World. I Have Been A Bricklayer And A Truck Driver, And I Tell You – As If You Haven't Been Told A Million Times Already – That Writing Is Harder. Lonelier. And Nobler And More Enriching.

I Think [religion] Is Presumptuous And I Think It Is Silly, Because It Makes You Believe That You Are Less Than What You Can Be. As Long As You Can Blame Everything On Some Unseen Deity, You Don’t Ever Have To Be Responsible For Your Own Behavior.

I Have But Nothing To Say To Young Girls. They're Fine To Look At, In The Way I Would Look At A Case Filled With Shang Dynasty Glazes, But Expecting To Carry On A Conversation With The Average Teen-aged Young Lady Is Akin To Reading Voltaire To A Cage Filled With Chimpanzees. I'm Certain They Would Feel The Same Alienation For Me. I Can Live With That Knowledge.

I Never Send A Story Off Until I Have Read It Aloud To At Least Two Or Three People. Because When I Read - And I Don't Need Their Criticism, What I Need Is My Own - When I Read It Aloud, There Is A Flow, There Is A Poetry To It.