“If you want to write fiction, the best thing you can do is take two aspirins, lie down in a dark room, and wait for the feeling to pass.”

“One thing that helps is to give myself permission to write badly. I tell myself that I’m going to do my five or 10 pages no matter what, and that I can always tear them up the following morning if I want. I’ll have lost nothing—writing and tearing up five pages would leave me no further behind than if I took the day off.”

“I settled for a cup of coffee. Only it wasn't coffee. It was a coffee substitute made by grinding up dandelion roots. The idea was that it wouldn't keep you awake, and it's always seemed to me that the only thing coffee really has going for it is that it will keep you awake.”

“The short story, I should point out, is perforce a labor of love in today's literary world; there's precious little economic incentive to write one...”

“Fuck you! I hope you die!""Everybody Dies," I said. "So fuck you.”

“You show up at these meetings to stay sober and you walk out with a fucking education.”

“People don't get to change things. Things change people once in a while, but people don't change things.”