Johnny Rich

He did it because he could not help himself, which explains everything and nothing

I don__ see big subjects as separate from little ones. Yes, you could trudge through life with great human tragedies played out before your eyes without ever taking notice. Or you could see a universe in the smallest thing. The way a person takes their coffee, for example, might say something profound and important about that person, about all humanity, about existence itself.

To be motivated to write a novel, I need to be unable not to write.

Good writing is more about graft and craft than inspiration and aspiration.

He thought of hanging himself, to pass the time.

To be mad is worse than not to be if this is what it is.

Inhumanity is part of humanity as much as suffering is a part of stories. Cruelty is written in the human script.

To reread a book is to read a different book. The reader is different. The meaning is different.

I__ a bit-part actor in my own life

Time passes. I drift in and out. As if I cease to be, until I remember to exist again.

In the chain of events, it is arbitrary to be sentimental about the passing of any one link.

Grief denied will surface in borrowed clothes, the mad, sad clothes of paranoia, fear or loneliness

Who can say they saw a whole play or read a whole book? Each has their own experience, their own play, their own book

A novel must be judged on its merits, not on how hard the journey was to write it.

A good book is not the same as a successful one.

Publishers are businesses and I don__ blame them for that. If they didn__ make money by publishing books, there wouldn__ be any books.

Because he believed in himself, he believed what he did was important. Or maybe it was the other way around.

All life is preoccupied with death. Death is the only certain future. Yet in the face of reason, everyone holds out hope for the highly improbable.