My personal theory is that younger audiences disdain books - not because those readers are dumber than past readers, but because today's reader is smarter.
Meeting authors is kind of the death of the characters. That is always heartbreaking.
People would ask me to autograph their bodies and then the next time I'd see them on tour they'd have my autograph tattooed. I decided I wouldn't write on people anymore, but I'd give them arms and legs and if they wanted those autographed I'd do that.
Being lonely is not a bad thing for a writer.
My only writing ritual is to shave my head bald between writing the first and second drafts of a book. If I can throw away all my hair, then I have the freedom to trash any part of the book on the next rewrite.
Few things in life seem more sexy than a banned book.
I try to tell a story the way someone would tell you a story in a bar, with the same kind of timing and pacing.
We don't see a lot of models for male social interaction. There's sports and barn raisings.
Every decade, we get a stunning collection of dynamic, heartbreaking short stories. In the past, those collections came from Barry Hannah, Mark Richard, and Thom Jones.
I would say any behavior that is not the status quo is interpreted as insanity, when, in fact, it might actually be enlightenment. Insanity is sorta in the eye of the beholder.
People used what they called a telephone because they hated being close together and they were scared of being alone.
It seems that so much writing is being done in the nineteenth-century model, where every connection has to be thoroughly explained.
The trick to forgetting the big picture is to look at everything close-up.
Movie brawls tend to be bloodless and quick.
My father used to call me 'bird bones' and, well, the name fits.
My grandfather was hit over the head by a crane boom in Seattle. Some of the family claimed he was never a violent, crazy person before that. Some say he was. It depends who you believe.
I've got two dogs; they're Boston terriers, and they're allowed everywhere.
That saying, about how you always kill the thing you love, well, it works both ways.
I used to work in a funeral home to feel good about myself, just the fact that I was breathing.
If you start in the pit of despair with these profane, awful things, even a glimmer of hope or awareness is going to occur that's much brighter coming from this dark, awful beginning.
