“Don't have stories; have sentences.”

“...I have come to be convinced that it is only the unbending observance of custom that sustains life in an urban circumstance.”

“It’s not what happens to people on the page; it’s about what happens to a reader in his heart and mind.”

“He came to chat with me the day of my being discharged, advising that I not stay at the dog fight until the last dog was dead. I was a kid and made little counsel. Now that I am a bigger kid, I see the value--belatedly--added. Yet I also see the loss of life in the protecting, first of all, of oneself. Better to give oneself away. Dead f*ck the dog and so on.”

“You have to ask it something it knew when it was alive. People don't become omniscient just because they have keeled over.”

“Homework, classes, running around, and then—bam—nothing but a life of work stretching out before you. No one prepares you for that feeling or even mentions it. You just suddenly have a gap and have to decide how to fill it.”

“Slow down and explain to us plebeians. If you have to, use sock puppets.”