Noriega wound up like a baseball pitcher on top of the bed and hurled the small gun, but was low and outside for a ball. His tight-fitting house dress was bunched up high on his...

I’m very anxious not to fall into archaism or “literary” diction. I want my vocabulary to have a very large range, but the words must be alive.

I am a bomb but I mean you no harm. That I still am here to tell this, is a miracle: I was deployed on May 15, 1957, but I didn’t go off because a...

The Book of Life, I’m still writing it—both literally and literarily. So far I’ve written the Table of Contents. Right now it’s more of a coffee table.

It is not that the girl is unfit for everything, it is that she is not of this world.

When I put together a graphic novel, I don’t think about literary prose. I think about storytelling.

I’m a minicamp body in 102-degree heat getting screamed at by the only other man my size: a middle-aged receivers coach they call Bow Wow.

My ambition is the immediate page of the book I am currently working on. The next word to follow the last. A fresh new idea.

Don’t stop aspiring. Just learn to duck. . .

As it stands there is a very strong argument that as the book trade becomes increasingly corporate it’s our literary heritage that is at risk – a vital part of our culture.

Diable!” They were hurling these words at Moreau like stones.

I wish the military were the militerary. Less fighting and more reading.

I always say, ‘Books beat boredom,’ said Amanda wisely.

I’m a book lover. I’ve probably already fucked a whole library.

Inhale when I inhale. Exhale when I exhale. Breathe with me,for two beating hearts breathing one breath together become one.

It’s odd to imagine, of course: you pass a car on a lonely rural highway; you sit beside a man in a diner and share views with him; you wait behind a customer checking into...

The gay revolution began as a literary revolution.

Writing is not a craft for the timid.

…she was so afraid of everything that she made it impossible to really enjoy anything at all.

Write or perish in the banality of mediocrity!

The monkey liked most humans. They left food cans outside their homes for his family to rummage through in the morningsun. Some yelled and threw sticks, but were slow and didn’t bite. Humans were mostly...

A distinguished clergyman told me that he chose the profession of a clergyman because it afforded the most leisure for literary pursuits. I would recommend to him the profession of a governor.

Taxi-drivers in Frankfurt are said to dislike the annual Book Fair because literary folk, instead of being shuttled to prostitutes like respectable members of other convening professions, prefer to stay in their hotels and fuck...

I believe the visionaries and true reflections of society will be rewarded after their lives. Those being rewarded now are giving the public what it needs now, usually applauding its current state and clearing consciences.

You know how sometimes you remember a place you once loved, a movie you’ve enjoyed, only to be disappointed when you return to that place or see that movie for a second time? Well, it...

I’m intrigued by how ordinary behavior exists so close beside its opposite.

She was widely read enough to appreciate my literary wit but not so widely read that she knew my sources. I like that in a woman.

A quality novel is never completed on a full nights sleep.

During the Government’s recent overhaul of GCSEs, I was asked to join a consultative group advising on the English Literature syllabus. It quickly became clear that the minister wanted to prescribe two Shakespeare plays for...

We are all of the same substance, the same life. Though there are many differences between us, those are merely the shadows that delineate our boundaries. Our light is the same.

Kids never jumped head first from the top ledge. Never. It seemed forever beforeStoney came back to the surface. Most of the white bubbles had already disappeared.

I’ll bet opening a store called Boobs and Books would increase literacy. I prefer a hands-on approach to learning.

Writers are much better behaved nowadays, for a couple of reasons. Once upon a time nobody was thinking of a career, unless you lived in New York, so there wasn’t as much pressure to present...

Sometimes I still feel that there are two of me: one clean, flawless picture, the other imperfect and cracked; one boy, one girl; one voice that speaks aloud and one that whispers in my ear;...

I know I will always be attracted to the unknown as it does often verify what I am or what else I could be.

Someone who dreams cannot be forced to stop—there are no limitations to dreams, because we do not own dreams, dreams are from God.

It was as if they’d discovered something that had once been there but had gotten hidden or misunderstood or forgotten over time, and they were charmed by it once more, and by one another. Which...

Though I am sometimes reluctant to admit it, there really is something ‘timeless’ in the Tyndale/King James synthesis. For generations, it provided a common stock of references and allusions, rivalled only by Shakespeare in this...

The words bloom like Spring flowers and pullulate as falling leaves in Autumn. Fresh invigorate swirls of the pen delight the pages with imagery, symbolism, theater, and emotion that pulsates with the passion of an...

The first epics were intended for recitation; the literary epic is meant to be read.

{Letter from Fawcett to the great Robert Ingersoll, 1894}I do so wish, that, in all these big questions, literary men would take you more for a guide than they do, or seem to do. You...

Grandpa said that we could solve a lot of the world’s problems if we considered cats and dogs edible. Like the neighbor’s dog who goes to the bathroom in his flower garden. And know what...

Learn how to read by taking small sips first. Drink my watery literary nipples.

One recalls the literary writer who, after grasping a story of a Mars voyage as a metaphor for isolation and the precariousness of relationships, realized that at a deeper, more subtle level it might even...

Naturally, since I myself am a writer, I do not wish the ordinary reader to read no modern books. But if he must read only the new or only the old, I would advise him...

Shakespeare was shakespeare; whether untrussing, but still him.

All I want is to sleep–to dream. Life is better in dreams.

[Henry] James’s critical genius comes out most tellingly in his mastery over, his baffling escape from, Ideas; a mastery and an escape which are perhaps the last test of a superior intelligence. He had a...

Senor Sempere believed that God lives, to a smaller or greater extent, in books, and that is why he devoted his life to sharing them, to protecting them, and to making sure their pages, like...

3,000 words, for me, is an exceptional day. 1,500 of which are eventually crossed out, and 1,000 rearranged.