“It ain't a crapshoot unless you write crap.”

“Writing doesn’t get easier with experience. The more you know, the harder it is to write.”

“I just want to say to the kids out there watching: You can do anything you want in life. Unless Jay Leno wants to do it too.”

“Unless he suddenly turns out to be a total psycho, he's a keeper”

“You can only look forward to a South Dakota winter if, as with childbirth, remodeling a house, or writing a novel, you're able to forget how bad it was the last time.”

“That is the mystery about writing: it comes out of afflictions, out of the gouged times, when the heart is cut open.”

“It occurred to me that the act of writing had led me through a swirl of memories that might otherwise have ended in paralysis or worse. By telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths. You make up others. You start sometimes with an incident that truly happened, like the night in the shit field, and you carry it forward by inventing incidents that did not in fact occur but that nonetheless help to clarify and explain.”