“Ignorance is a lot like alcohol: the more you have of it, the less you are able to see its effect on you.”

“Writing is self-reinforcing. Don't make a fetish out of it, and don't surrender to the myth of the garret, or the myth of the chained muse. It's like playing the guitar, or practicing taekwondo, or having sex. The more you do, the better you get. The better you get, the better it feels. The better it feels, the more you want to do.”

“On Salem's Lot: " My favorite vampire story ever. I first read this 20 years ago, and I can still quote lines from it."You have been ill-used, Mr Bryant.""I will see you sleep like the dead, teacher.""The boy makes ten of you, false priest."Fuck twilight. Seriously... ”

“Tad’s mission in life is to have more fun than anyone else in New York City, and this involves a lot of moving around, since there is always the likelihood that where you aren’t is more fun than where you are. You are awed by his strict refusal to acknowledge any goal higher than the pursuit of pleasure. You want to be like that. You also think he is shallow and dangerous. His friends are all rich and spoiled, like the cousin from Memphis you met earlier in the evening who would not accompany you below Fourteenth Street because, he said, he didn’t have a lowlife visa. This cousin has a girlfriend with cheekbones to break your heart, and you knew she was the real thing when she steadfastly refused to acknowledge your presence. She possessed secrets—about islands, about horses, about French pronunciation—that you would never know.”

“Because what if I got to know you and you turned out to be just like they said? What if you weren’t the person I hoped you were?That, more than anything, would have hurt the most.”

“Even cats have questions – like “Can’t you see my bowl is empty?” or “Why don’t you turn off the ***! rain now?” From their perspective we are gods!”

“The world is full of lots of people play acting and hurling stuff about, unconscious of the effects. And there are large group karmic things going on through history that none of us should ever take personally. Rushing about trying to rectify the sins of the past is not productive. The best you can do is to be present as the new you in the now, holding your light as a steady candle to add to the beam of calm and love now spreading to help wake more and more people up. Hopefully we will evolve as a species to eventually cease the unnecessary conflict between different groups of ourselves.”