“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...”

“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.”

“My glass was empty. I poured more scotch into it, took a small sip, and all at once the silly thing was empty again. Strange. Then it was full again. And then it was empty again. Strange, I thought. Fool glass must have a hole in it. Scotch disappears the instant it's poured. Strange. Then I was stretched out on the bed, too tired and too drunk to bother removing my shoes. My eyes closed themselves and the world crept away on little cat feet, leaving me floating in the middle of the air.”

“I wouldn't presume to define noir - if we could define it, we wouldn't need to use a French word for it - but it seems to me it's more a way of looking at the world than what one sees.”

“Man, I so sick of dinosaurs. They wasn't extinct, I'd go out an' kill 'em myself.”

“I dialed it now, and the machine picked up. I listened to a dead man's voice. I hung up, wondering how long it would be before someone unplugged the machine, how long before the telephone company cut off the phone service.You don't die all at once. Not anymore. These days you die a little at a time.”

“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.”