“Reading was a joy, a desperately needed escape -- I didn't read to learn, I was reading to read.”

“I write for the same reason I read: because it's all there is for me.”

“Literature simply becomes richer after you've been fired, rejected, stranded, or had to change a few midnight diapers.”

“Harold Bloom weeps for me.”

“Writing is the only art form where a good number of the artists make a slice of their living criticizing one another in print, in public. ”

“I had read history too closely, read of Caesar and the Roman Empire. I had not noticed that in the books there were white spaces between each line; the white spaces are there to remind you of the unspoken, unwritten truth. When one only reads the words and does not read what is not written in the book, then one will never learn to understand.”

“This is because white people need to show off the books that they have read. Just as hunters will mount the heads of their kills, white people need to let people know that they have made their way through hundreds or even thousands of books.”