Quotes from Rick Moody

Death was terribly durable. It was the sturdiest idea around. A body was dead, and before long it wasn't even a body anymore, it was just elements. But it was still dead.

I suppose I should say that I treasure blasphemy, as a faith of the highest order.

You could pay Arthur Janov to teach you to scream about history, or you could learn prayer or a mantra, or you could write your life down and hope to make peace with it, write it down, or paint it, or turn it into improvisational theater, but that was the best you could probably do. You were stuck.

I am not that creative. And therefore you must be real.

Normally, I am a little insecure about myself without a shirt on, as my days of being attractive are now behind me.

Deviants and losers and mutants and the loveless...were the proper readers of Marvel comics.

The thing you did to alleviate the loneliness was to take off your clothes and touch someone, even if you didn't really know the person well.

Never the romance without the bloodshed!

The sounds of southwestern cacti are broadcast for several weeks until, by general assent, it is agreed that cacti make no sounds.

I]t is things that make us happy when conversation begins to reveal itself as a paltry substitute.

I am now the site of an unmistakable sag...With fancy holographic belt buckles do I attempt to restrain my stampeding softness. In vain....My only virtues, as a physical specimen, are my sideburns, which are like the pelts of rare woodland animals. My sideburns are not to be ignored.

He seemed as though he were habitually preparing himself for something awful, and this was justified because many awful things had happened to him.

Impotence, fetishism, bisexuality, and bondage are all facts of life, and our fiction should reflect that. Rick Moody

Being right and being happy are on opposite ends of this dance that is the life of human machines.

I'm trying to make sure that there's comedy as well as sadness. It makes the sadness more memorable.

Impotence, fetishism, bisexuality, and bondage are all facts of life, and our fiction should reflect that.

I have worked really hard to defy categorization, to break down a taxonomy whenever it comes my way.

Genre is a bookstore problem, not a literary problem.

The process of composition, messing around with paragraphs and trying to make really good prose, is hardwired into my personality.

Maybe when I'm sixty-five I'll talk about my literary life.

In general, each form is a relief from the other forms. I can't write a novel after a novel. I just use up all the material each time, and I need to rest.

I made this list of stuff that it's time for me to try to do.

I am in Boston right now, in fact, to do work at the New England Historical Genealogical Library, where I'm trying to finish up tracing my lineage back to the seventeenth century.

I love comic books and always did as a kid.