Novelists From The United States

"Patel?!?! Ravadahm Patel?!?! How am I going to make a living on these deadbeat wogs?! Where'd you get this from, a morgue? Oh come on! What's the fuckin' point?! What's the fuckin' point in any case!? I gotta argue with you? I gotta knock heads with the cops? I'm busting my balls, sell your dirt to two deadbeats; money in a mattress. I come back, you can't even keep the contracts safe. I got to go out and close them again. What the fuck am I wasting my time... Fuck this shit!"

"Then I'm over the fucking top and you owe me a Cadillac. And I don't want any fucking shit and I don't give a shit."

"You ever take a dump, made you feel you'd just slept for twelve hours?"

"Or me lying in the... Let me tell ya... Lying in bed the next day, she brought me cafe au lait, she gives me a cigarette. My balls feel like concrete. Eh?"

"Cop couldn't find his fucking couch, the living room."

"[T]he job of mass entertainment is to cajole, seduce and flatter consumers to let them know that what they thought was right is right, and that their tastes and their immediate gratification are of the utmost concern of the purveyor. The job of the artist, on the other hand, is to say, wait a second, to the contrary, everything that we have thought is wrong. Let's reexamine it."

"We don't have to worry about making it interesting; all we have to worry about is getting rid of the pig."

"Before you can steal fire from the Gods you gotta be able to get coffee for the director"

"The art of the theater is action. It is the study of commitment. The word is an act. To SAY the word in such a way as to make it heard and understood by all in the theater is a commitment — it is the highest art to see a human being out on a stage speaking to a thousand of his or her peers saying, 'These words which I am speaking are the TRUTH — they are not an approximation of any kind. They are the God's truth, and I support them with my life,' which is what the actor does on stage."

"My alma mater is the Chicago Public Library."

"A society can neither advance nor improve without excess of disposable income. This excess can only be amassed through the productions of goods and services necessary or attractive to the mass. A financial system which allows this leads to inequality; one that does not leads to mass starvation. Page 10."

"The goal of the Left is a government-run country and that of the Right the freedom of the individual from government. Page 236."

"Where have you been, Shelly? Bruce and Harriet Nyborg. Do you want to see the memos...? They're nuts... they used to call in every week [...] Did you see how they were living? [...] The people are insane. They just like talking to salesmen."

"A man should BE his job. You are FUCKED at yours."

"April to September it's me, it's no fucking Moss! Due respect... he's an order taker. Talks... oh, talks a good game. But look at the board, and it's me John. It's me."

"You are a shithead, Williamson. If you can't think on your feet you oughta keep your mouth shut."

"I point back in the living room, back to the sideboard. I didn't fucking know there was a sideboard there!"

"Get the chalk! Get the fucking chalk! Put me on the board! Put me on the Cadillac board! Williamson! Pick up the fucking chalk! Hey, Rick I closed em! I closed the cocksucker!"

"What the hell are you? You're a fuckin' secretary. Fuck you. That's my message to ya: fuck you and kiss my ass, and if you don't like it baby I'm going across the street to Jerry Graff, period, fuck you. Now, I want you to put me on the cadillac board and I want two promising leads and I don't want any bullshit and I want them close together because I am going to close them all, and that is all I have to say to you! [flips him off]"

"That's fucked. That's fucked. You don't look at the fucking percentage. You look at the gross."

"Well, to the law, you’re an accessory. Before the fact."

"Cop couldn't find his dick, two hands and a map."

"Fuck the machine? FUCK THE MACHINE! What is this, courtesy class? You're fucked, Rick."

"Anybody that talks to this asshole is a fuckin' asshole."

"Yes, well that's very cute, but you're running this office like a bunch of bullshit."

"So much of what I see troubling women our age is the sense of surprise at the way it turned out, the toxic brew of boredom and thwarted ambition. Thwarted in many cases (in most, perhaps) by our own choices. I hope my daughters can avoid that. But you know, our mothers chanted, “The Personal Is Political,” from the rooftops, and every woman I know feels like her ambivalence is her own personal failing. So maybe nothing ever changes."

"[W]hatever my intentions, whatever the truth of my claim, I had no business giving a lecture to a total stranger."

"Those of us whose parenting style can be described as "a series of reflexes, instincts, and minute-by-minute adjustments," as Julie of A Little Pregnant puts it, rather than as a philosophy, are less invested in our own practices. What we do is often less a matter of conviction than one of convenience. What we need to remember is that there is no need to apologize for that, even in the face of the most red-faced outrage."

"Dodgeball? My children were playing dodgeball? That cruel, brutal, violent schoolyard game so mercilessly satirized in the 2004 film with Ben Stiller? The game, more important, that exemplified everything that was wrong with my childhood in suburban New Jersey, a short, pasty-faced Jewish girl in a town full of scrubbed, blond, athletic WASPs, their long tanned limbs toned from years of tennis lessons and country club swim teams? Dodgeball? Over my dead body."

"The Jews I knew growing up didn't do "do-it-yourself." When my father needed to hammer something he generally used his shoe, and the only real tool he owned was a pair of needle-nose pliers."

"I tend to approach giving interviews with the same sense of circumspection and restraint as I approach my writing. That is to say, virtually none."

"Think about it, I say. How many straight men maintain inappropriately intimate relationships with their mothers? How many shop with them? I want a gay son. People laugh, but they assume I'm kidding. I'm not."

"I’m a little obsessed with learning new things, and every book is another opportunity to learn something new. My theory of fiction writing isn’t “Write what you know,” it’s “Write what you want to know.”"

"[T]here is an inverse correlation between the cleanliness of a bathroom and my 3-year-old daughter's need to move her bowels."

"I'd written personal essays before, but never on this scale -- never so often and with such, er, honesty. (If by honesty I mean slashing my wrists and hemorrhaging all over the computer screen)."

"We are the real Americans. Everett Moran, standing brave and resolute in the face of bigotry, is a real American. George Soros, devoting his life and his fortune to serving those less fortunate than he is, is a real American. The citizens of California who have donated their own money to support stem cell research, to compensate for the cowardice of our Taliban government, are real Americans. The rest of them? The ones that destroy the Constitution in service to their narrow-minded and zealously self-centered agendas? Those pinheads sure as hell aren't Americans. Secession. That's what we need."

"When I was 15, what I wanted in a boyfriend was just that confidence and swagger. I wanted someone who knew what he was doing, because I was just faking it. What I want for my daughter is the exact opposite."

"Why are the architects of the family-values agenda so eager to punish into the next generation? What is being served by seeking, quite literally, a tooth for a tooth?"

"Why I went? I think it is incredibly important that those of us who have privilege use that privilege to call attention to this ongoing catastrophe. So, I want to be very clear. My husband was worried about me. It’s sweet. I had an uncomfortable nine-and-a-half hours. I had a mildly unpleasant nine-and-a-half hours. When a Palestinian here is arrested and goes into one of the many military prisons, their experience is horrible. They can be held without charges. There are children who are held without charges. When an Israeli Jewish activist — they have been arrested over and over again. They put their bodies on the line. They put their reputations on the line in terms of their community. What we experienced was very minor. But I think — I can only speak for myself, to say that it felt critical to me to use whatever small platform I have to draw attention to this crisis and to say that as a human being, and as a human being born in this country, I have to use my voice to say that this kind of horrific violence, this starving of children, this mass bombing, is completely unacceptable. It is not just unjust. It’s horrific."

"There comes a time in the history of all bureaucracies when they must inevitably parody their own functions."

"He always seemed to come at a subject through a perspective slightly askew, as if he viewed reality through a glass lightly."

"Sadly, at least two wonderful "untold tales" of the Sleeper were lost when Roger Zelazny passed away. I know that Roger had always intended to bring back Croyd's boyhood friend Joey Sarzanno, and tell the story of the crystallized woman that Croyd kept in his closet. But he never had the chance, and now he never will. Croyd will continue to be a part of Wild Cards — Roger deliberately crafted the character so he would be easy for the other writers to use, and always delighted in seeing what we did with him — but it would take an unusual amount of hubris for any of us to attempt to write either of those two stories, and it is not something I would encourage. They were Roger's stories. No one else could do 'em justice."

"He was a poet, first, last, always. His words sang. He was a storyteller without peer. He created worlds as colorful and exotic and memorable as any our genre has ever seen."

"Zelazny likes to develop different systems of magic, but his emphasis is on systems. He feels the magic should be worked out and contain no contradictions. It should run more like science and not be too supernatural in which anything goes. That route leads to magic being a crutch to move the plot along. He also likes to use the mystery plot. He feels that there is an elegance to having a puzzle overlaid on a fantasy or SF novel. The mystery helps build the mythic elements in fantasy, but is also akin to the process of discovery in science."

"For absent friends — Kathy Acker and Roger Zelazny, and all points between."

"Roger Zelazny died as I completed the first chapter of The Wake and his memorial informed the second chapter."

"Zelazny, telling of gods and wizards, uses magical words as if he himself were a wizard. He reaches into the subconscious and invokes archetypes to make the hair rise on the back of your neck. Yet these archetypes are transmuted into a science fictional world that is as believable — and as awe-inspiring — as the world you now live in."

"His stories are sunk to the knees in maturity and wisdom, in bravura writing that breaks rules most writers only suspect exist. His concepts are fresh, his attacks bold, his resolutions generally trenchant. Thus leading us inexorably to the conclusion that Roger Zelazny is the reincarnation of Geoffrey Chaucer."

"The work ... abounds in literary, historical and mythological allusions. The sensitivities revealed are far-ranging, capable of fine psychological and sociological analysis, and are as responsive to the contemporary as to the traditional... There is no other writer who, dealing with the struggle between life and death on such a fantastically rarefied level can evoke so much hunger for the stuff of living itself."

"My favorite form is the short story. From an aesthetics stand point you really have to pare down to the bone. You can't write a throw-away scene."