Charles Bock

“I was not a happy or popular or happy-with-myself kid, and I wasn't an especially motivated student, either.”

“My sister, who is a wonderful and beautiful actress now, when she was 11 or 12, she would go out and take pictures of the punk parties in the desert. She used to have blue hair, and she got kicked out of Las Vegas Day School for having blue hair.”

“After Diana passed, I did not believe for one second that I would remarry or that I would be in love again.”

“I had a string of really awful jobs in Manhattan where my whole point was to do as little work in the world as possible so I could hoard time to write.”

“What I try to do is write about forgotten people, and, in a certain sense, we're all forgotten.”

“A writer has to write something that they're - sit down with or are interested in every day of their life.”

“My quilting is dookie. All needlepoint-related things I should do better on, being honest.”

“One older brother of mine collects comics, and when I was younger, I collected them, too.”

“Writing books takes a long time, and one thing a writer must do is learn to live with his or her project.”

“'Death Of A Salesman,' 'Streetcar Named Desire,' these are the things that, when I was growing up, made me want to be an artist.”

“I was always small and thin. I wasn't the kid who got invited to parties.”

“When I was in college, I could only write on a WordPerfect program.”

“Really, I've worked my whole adult life at fiction, to try and write fiction.”

“It's been wonderful to hear so many excited and intelligent responses to 'Beautiful Children,' not only from reviewers but also from the people coming out to my readings.”

“To me, fiction is the single best way there is - to me, it's the most profound way - of dealing with questions that have no answers.”

“Art, you know, art and fiction, especially in big books, you know, it takes a while.”

“I do think that people go to Las Vegas for 'whatever happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.' They go for the spectacle.”

“I really love my chosen craft. No matter whether it's disappearing or disappeared from the mainstream, that's really been where my mind and heart is.”

“When I was in grad school, I wrote one early story that was Vegas, and then I stayed away from it. I was trying to expand and do different things. I knew I would write about it, but I stayed away for as long as I could.”

“Too often in this world, the things you root for - whether sports teams or spouses to recover from horrible diseases - don't quite pan out.”