“Whatever they may say, your story is truly your own. You have a responsibility to it, the way a father has to a child”

“A father must take credit for his child, but never a child for his father.”

“A man's life is all he has. When you're old, it's all you'll ever have.”

“Here, need blurs the line between good and bad, and a constant promise of random violence sticks like humidity down your back.”

“To be an honest writer, you have to be away from home, and totally alone in life.”

“I used to believe authenticity could be achieved solely by describing, in our own words, one's own fragment of experience. This was of course predicated on the complete intellectual and aesthetic independence of the "I". One eventually realizes such intellectual isolationism promotes style, ego, awards. But not change.”

“‎"A writer has to talk about the things that go untalked about”