When I first started out, I was trying to write stories about nurses and lawyers and a lot of people I didn't know anything about, and they just weren't working.

Some people were born just so they could be buried.

If a person does this for just a couple of years and discovers that it just isn't for him, that's okay. At least he can move on knowing that he gave it his best shot.

Look, girls don't care how many push-ups you can do. They just want to get high and wear flowers in their hair. Maybe steal a car.

The Oxys filled holes in me I hadn't realized were empty. It was, at least for those first few months, a wonderful way to be disabled. I felt blessed.

I'm beginning to believe that anything I do to extend my life is just going to be outweighed by the agony of living it.

Though there are still many good people out there in the world, it seems that they're vastly outnumbered by the stupid, selfish, violent ones.

I spent thirty-two years in a paper mill in southern Ohio, and before that I worked in a meatpacking plant and a shoe factory.

A lot of people get the wrong impression, think there's something romantic or tragic about hitting bottom.

When I turned fifty, I decided to quit the mill and go to graduate school.

I sort of like writing about weird characters, I guess.

Unconditional Love is the outer expression of Inner Peace.

Any belief that doesn't add any positive value to your present or future, absolutely doesn't belong in your mind.

It took us a while to discover that we do effectively think, but that we more readily narrate backward in order to give ourselves the illusion of understanding, and give a cover to our past actions.

All the modern verse plays, they're terrible; they're mostly about the poetry. It's more important that the play is first.

You have a gift that can make you rich. Everyone does.

Unlike many other Celts, I cannot claim that Celtic was my first love but I can say that it will be my last love.

Our permanent address is tommorrow.

The hard part is how to plan a picture so as to give to others what has happened to you. To render in paint an experience, to suggest the sense of light and color, of air and space.

We haven't had a strategic free kick all night. No one's knocked over attackers ad lib.

Marketing is what gets you noticed.