New Orleans cuisine is Creole rather than Cajun.

This is the point being missed by readers who lament Liquor's lack of hot sex scenes, probably because they aren't old enough to understand that a passionate relationship could be about anything other than sex.

Mostly I enjoy the restaurants (my husband is a chef), though I wish we had a wider diversity of ethnic food.

My dad told me that no one could ever make it as a writer, that my chances were equivalent to winning the lottery - which was good for me, because I like to have something to prove.

My mother is an office manager, my father a professor of economics and financial planner.

I've tried to avoid labels, but they always find you.

There are people who must spend huge amounts of time composing these online diatribes against me, all about how disgusting and terrible I am and how no one should ever read my books, and it's not enough for them to hate me, they can't stand the fact that ANYONE likes me!

I like visiting people's homes on Saint Joseph's Day, when people set up altars, serve food as a tribute to the saint, and invite the public - I enjoy that much more than Mardi Gras.

New Orleans cuisine is Creole rather than Cajun.

I've certainly learned a great deal from my husband, though, and could never have written a book like Liquor without him and the people he introduces me to and the stories he brings home.

Some of the food in Liquor is food I've really eaten filtered through a veil of fiction.

I think film had a terrible effect on horror fiction particularly in the 80s, with certain writers turning out stuff as slick and cliched as Hollywood movies.

In high school I was the dog, always, and I never have felt comfortable or right in my body, and part of my whole exhibitionist thing has probably been a way of testing to see whether or not I really was this repulsive creature that I felt like for so long.

My childhood may have been more demented than most, because I learned to read very early and was allowed to read whatever I wanted.

In the Netherlands I read the first chapter of Exquisite Corpse to an audience that laughed in all the places I thought were funny - an experience I've never had in America!

In France, for instance, one magazine writer was convinced that On The Road had been a huge influence on Lost Souls and was crushed to learn that I hadn't read the one until after I'd written the other.

I certainly wanted to write a book that was honest about New Orleans without explaining it to death, so much so that the first draft contained references absolutely incomprehensible to anyone who hasn't lived here for several years.

I'd much rather do an obviously commercial writing project than get a day job.

And I can't think of a reason I'd ever use a pseudonym, as I wouldn't want to publish something that I didn't like enough to put my name on it.

I don't like to talk about work in progress, but the novel I'm working on now is definitely not horror.

I certainly don't think I would have been asked to pose for Rage if I wasn't a known writer.

Celebrities, even insignificant ones like me, are created to be abused by the Great Unwashed.

Yeah, I think A Confederacy of Dunces is probably the perfect New Orleans book.

Some nights are made for torture, or reflection, or the savoring of loneliness.

Some nights are made for torture or reflection or the savoring of loneliness.

The night is the hardest time to be alive and 4am knows all my secrets.

At its very core, virtual reality is about being freed from the limitations of actual reality. Carrying your virtual reality with you, and being able to jump into it whenever and wherever you want, qualitatively changes the experience for the better. Experiencing mobile VR is like when you first tried a decent desktop VR experience.

On the show, we are not trying to get people to eat their vegetables; we are not trying to get people to become Democrats. We are basically trying to encourage people to get involved with public life so that politics isn't left to the wealthy and privileged.

I think I was the third person in the world to get a Kindle, and I hated it from the minute I got it.

Space is not space between the earth and the sun to one who looks down from the windows of the Milky Way.

In Denmark lots of people come up to me for autographs.

Remember the first rule of gunfighting... 'have a gun.'

Some Critics on the Hearth are not only good-natured, but have rather too high, or, if that is impossible, let us say too pronounced, an opinion of the abilities of their literary friends.

No psychologist should pretend to understand what he does not understand... Only fools and charlatans know everything and understand nothing.

Every now and then I read a poem that does touch something in me, but I never turn to poetry for solace or pleasure in the way that I throw myself into prose.

I go to Prague every year if I can, value my relationships there like gold, and feel myself in a sense Czech, with all their hopes and needs. They are a people I not only love, but admire.

First, do enough training. Then believe in yourself and say: I can do it. Tomorrow is my day. And then say: the person in front of me, he is just a human being as well; he has two legs, I have two legs, that is all. That is mentally how you prepare.

A lot of people do that kind of nostalgia stuff believing that they were very happy in their teenage years, but that's probably just an illusion.

In spite of warnings, nothing much happens until the status quo becomes more painful than change.

The wolf changes his coat, but not his disposition.

The priceless galaxy of misinformation called the mind.

Long term, I have a lot of confidence in the United States. We have an excellent record in terms of innovation. We have great universities that are involved in technological change and progress. We have an entrepreneurial culture, much more than almost any other country.

Dreams are more real than reality itself, they're closer to the self.

Trust is the easiest thing in the world to lose, and the hardest thing in the world to get back.

I want to continually find ways to bring my ideas off the stage and into the real world, into the streets. I think I can make the world a better place, if only for a little while.

Children love and want to be loved and they very much prefer the joy of accomplishment to the triumph of hateful failure. Do not mistake a child for his symptom.

Does koala bear poop smell like cough drops?

It's not love at first sight, it's having the sight, to distinguish true love, from just mere beauty.

We should not say that one man's hour is worth another man's hour, but rather that one man during an hour is worth just as much as another man during an hour. Time is everything, man is nothing: he is at the most time's carcass.