“People don't need love. What they need is success in one form or another. It can be love but it needn't be.”

“It was like the beginning of life and laughter. It was the real meaning of the sun”

“That was all a man needed: hope. It was lack of hope that discouraged a man.”

“jan was an excellent fuck...she had a tight pussy and she took it like it was a knife that was killing her.”

“You bitch," I whispered, "I love you." Then I came.”

“If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. ...”

“Disobey God and you are forgiven. Disobey Nature and you get disease.”

“Whenever you read a cancer booklet or website or whatever, they always list depression among the side effects of cancer. But, in fact, depression is not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a sid...”

“Cancer. The word meant the same to me as tsunami or piranha. I had never seen them; I wasn't even quite sure what they were, but I knew they were bad and I knew in many cases they were deadly.”

“A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it.”

“Write a short story every week. It's not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row.”

“My short stories are like soft shadows I have set out in the world, faint footprints I have left. I remember exactly where I set down each and every one of them, and how I felt when I did. Short st...”

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”