Sometimes when I think how good my book can be, I can hardly breathe.

No one will ever know what 'In Cold Blood' took out of me. It scraped me right down to the marrow of my bones. It nearly killed me. I think, in a way, it did kill me.

Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act.

Writing stopped being fun when I discovered the difference between good writing and bad and, even more terrifying, the difference between it and true art. And after that, the whip came down.

I got this idea of doing a really serious big work-it would be precisely like a novel, with a single difference: Every word of it would be true from beginning to end.

The quietness of his tone italicized the malice of his reply.

I like to talk on TV about those things that aren't worth writing about.

Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.

Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

I was eleven, then I was sixteen. Though no honors came my way, those were the lovely years.

Well, I'm about as tall as a shotgun, and just as noisy.

All literature is gossip.

That isn't writing at all, it's typing.

Friendship is a pretty full-time occupation if you really are friendly with somebody. You can't have too many friends because then you're just not really friends.

It is the want to know the end that makes us believe in God, or witchcraft, believe, at least, in something.

I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.

When God hands you a gift, he also hands you a whip; and the whip is intended for self-flagellation solely.

Venice is like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs in one go.

Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it.

I can see every monster as they come in.

A conversation is a dialogue, not a monologue. That's why there are so few good conversations: due to scarcity, two intelligent talkers seldom meet.

Mick Jagger is about as sexy as a pissing toad.

Fame is only good for one thing - they will cash your check in a small town.

Sometimes when I think how good my book can be, I can hardly breathe.

Love is a chain of love as nature is a chain of life.

I don't care what anybody says about me as long as it isn't true.

To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the inner music that words make.

My major regret in life is that my childhood was unnecessarily lonely.

Love, having no geography, knows no boundaries.

Its a scientific fact that if you stay in California you lose one point of your IQ every year.

A conversation is a dialogue not a monologue. Thats why there are so few good conversations due to scarcity two intelligent talkers seldom meet.

Disco is the best floor show in town. Its very democratic boys with boys girls with girls girls with boys blacks and whites capitalists and Marxists Chinese and everything else all in one big mix.

The true beloveds of this world are in their lover's eyes lilacs opening, ship lights, school bells, a landscape, remembered conversations, friends, a child's Sunday, lost voices, one's favorite suit, autumn and all seasons, memory, yes, it being the earth and water of existence, memory.

And since gin to artifice bears the same relation as tears to mascara, her attractions at once dissembled.

New York is the only real city-city.

Of course there is a Santa Claus. It’s just that no single somebody could do all he has to do. So the Lord has spread the task among us all. That’s why everybody is Santa Claus. I am. You are.

There were hints of sunrise on the rim of the sky, yet it was still dark, and the traces of morning color were like goldfish swimming in ink.

The wind is us it gathers and remembers all our voices, then sends them talking and telling through the leaves and the fields.

It takes a lot of bad writing to get to a little good writing.

The glass is always half full: I have no time for anything negative - and actually, I've bought crystals for all my team, so they all carry crystals as well.

Rock never meant the same thing to everyone, but when I was growing up in the late seventies, everyone could identify the five, ten bands that formed the center.

From the industry's point of view, the problem is not that coal companies blast the top off mountains, turning the area into a moonscape and polluting the air and releasing toxic chemical into what's left of the local streams and aquifers. It's that the people who live near the mines are too cozy with their cousins.

He makes me so glad that music is not nearly as lucrative as it once was.

I had tutors, but education was just not a priority.

It's disheartening to write goals from year to year, looking back only to see you are in the same place. You can make so many promises that you get sick of yourself, but what is it that God can't do?

For every betrayed woman, there is always the betrayer, man.

I said if I have a No. 1, I'll do a naked photo shoot! I'm not sure a lot of people would like to see that, but it was more to the fans, really. Every gig I do, they try to get me to take my clothes off, so it's a promise to them - if I get a No. 1, I'll happily do a naked shoot.

Youth is, after all, just a moment, but it is the moment, the spark, that you always carry in your heart.

At commencement you wear your square shaped mortarboards. My hope is that from time to time you will let your minds be bold and wear sombreros.