“I'm serious, Jim. You need to put this crap away. You walk into school on Monday talking to me, or anyone else, about the city's pesky troll problem, and you're not exactly going to get a lot of pe...”

“He paused in the hallway, sniffing the air. He scowled, sniffed some more. He pressed an intercom button on the wall. "Betty, I distinctly smell sewage. Could you get a plumber out here ASAP?" Seve...”

“Something warned me that what I might see would haunt me forever.”

“Is it...can we...is it safe?" Tub checked the lot but he seemed unconcerned. "Coach Lawrence nabbed him for practice. We live to fight another day, soldier." "No...I mean, the thing...is it...?" Tu...”

“I say making movies is like eating a sandwich of shit. Sometimes you get more bread, sometimes less bread, but you always get shit." (Guardian interview 2006)”

“Success is fucking up on your own terms.”

“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.”