I'd rather be a born-once hog than a born-again Christian any day.

That’s the way we see life: your community is your survival. And if you live in a small community like this, even the people you hate you have as friends.

If I can be writing, I can take a certain amount of control when so much around me is upsetting.

Writing is like meditation or going into an ESP trance, or prayer. Like dreaming. You are tapping into your unconscious. To be fully conscious and alert, with life banging and popping and cuckooing all around, you are not going to find your way to your subconscious, which is a place of complete submission.