“You’re going back?” asked Bod. Things that had been immutable were changing. “You’re really leaving? But. You’re my guardian.” “I was you’re guardian. But you are old enough to guard yourself. I have other things to protect.”

“If you only write when you’re inspired you may be a fairly decent poet, but you’ll never be a novelist because you’re going to have to make your word count today and those words aren’t going to wait for you whether you’re inspired or not.You have to write when you’re not inspired. And you have to write the scenes that don’t inspire you. And the weird thing is that six months later, a year later, you’ll look back at them and you can’t remember which scenes you wrote when you were inspired and which scenes you just wrote because they had to be written next.The process of writing can be magical. …Mostly it’s a process of putting one word after another.”

“You don’t want to ask after the health of anyone, if you’re a funeral director. They think maybe you’re scouting for business.”

“It’s easier to kill people, when you’re dead yourself,” she told him. “I mean, it’s not such a big deal. You’re not so prejudiced any more.”

“She patted him on the arm. “You’re fucked up, Mister. But you’re cool.” “I believe that’s what they call the human condition,” said Shadow.”

“Nothing’s changed. You’ll go home. You’ll be bored. You’ll be ignored. No one will listen to you, really listen to you. You’re too clever and too quiet for them to understand. They don’t even get your name right.”

“And that life is what happens when you’re alive, and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.”