“When it's in a book I don't think it'll hurt any more ...exist any more. One of the things writing does is wipe things out. Replace them.”

“I don't understand it any more than you do, but one thing I've learned is that you don't have to understand things for them to be.”

“I thought to myself, 'why not write a bestseller?' In the first place, more people buy them and more people read them. You make more money and it doesn’t take any more time to write a bestseller than it does to write a book nobody buys.”

“Life is so damned hard, so damned hard... It just hurts people and hurts people, until finally it hurts them so that they can't be hurt ever any more. That's the last and worst thing it does.”

“When the entire world is built on death and horror, when existence is a constant state of panic, it's hard to get worked up about any one thing. Specific fears have become irrelevant. We've replace them with a smothering blanket far worse.”

“I don't think any good book is based on factual experience. Bad books are about things the writer already knew before he wrote them. ”