“Obliqueness is the curse of the reading class.”

“If your car won't start, curse it ... and be sure you curse it female.”

“Let this ground be seeded with salt, so that no stalk of corn, or stalk of wheat shall ever grow. Cursed be the children of this ground, and cursed be their loins. Also cursed be their hams and hocks. Hail Marry full of grace, let us blow this goddamn place.”

“For every mother who ever cursed God for her child dead in the road, for every father who ever cursed the man who sent him away from the factory with no job, for every child who was ever born to pain and asked why, this is the answer. Our lives are like these things I build. Sometimes they fall down for a reason, sometimes they fall down for no reason at all.”

“I'm a slow reader, but I usually get through seventy or eighty books a year, most fiction. I don't read in order to study the craft; I read because I like to read”

“Reading is the creative center of a writer's life." -”

“Read a lot, write a lot is the great commandment.”