God is cruel. Sometimes he makes you live.

It's a mystery. That's the first thing that interests me about the idea of God. If there is one, it's mysterious and powerful and awesome to even consider the concept, and you have to take it seriously.

And poets, in my view, and I think the view of most people, do speak God's language - it's better, it's finer, it's language on a higher plane than ordinary people speak in their daily lives.

I've always believed in God. I also think that's the sort of thing that either comes as part of the equipment, the capacity to believe, or at some point in your life, when you're in a position where you actually need help from a power greater than yourself, you simply make an agreement.

Every book you pick up has its own lesson or lessons, and quite often the bad books have more to teach than the good ones.

I was in enough to get along with people. I was never socially inarticulate. Not a loner. And that saved my life, saved my sanity. That and the writing. But to this day I distrust anybody who thought school was a good time. Anybody.

I watched Titanic when I got back home from the hospital, and cried. I knew that my IQ had been damaged.

I can remember being home from school with tonsillitis and writing stories in bed to pass the time.

Well, I'm like a drug addict, I'm always saying I'm going to stop, and then I don't, what I've said consistently is that I hope I know when to stop: when it starts to get repetitive.

You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.