A lot of people get the wrong impression, think there's something romantic or tragic about hitting bottom..

I spent thirty-two years in a paper mill in southern Ohio, and before that I worked in a meatpacking plant and a shoe factory..

If a person does this for just a couple of years and discovers that it just isn't for him, that's okay. At least he can move on knowing that he gave ….

Some people were born just so they could be buried..

Nostalgia is partly illusion in that we remember things differently as we get older, etc. But that doesn't mean, when historians look back on the 195….

I'm not sure I would have ever decided to try to write when I was forty-five if I hadn't already gotten that degree [in English]..

Look, girls don't care how many push-ups you can do. They just want to get high and wear flowers in their hair. Maybe steal a car..

Part of the reason might be that I was born in 1954 and I look upon my youth with great fondness, like many old men. And, though my work doesn't focu….

I didn't feel that so much as an outsider when I started writing; I've felt that way all my life. I don't know, man; I guess I was just wired wrong. ….

I'm beginning to believe that anything I do to extend my life is just going to be outweighed by the agony of living it..

When I turned fifty, I decided to quit the mill and go to graduate school..

Though there are still many good people out there in the world, it seems that they're vastly outnumbered by the stupid, selfish, violent ones..

The humor I came up with is, for the most part, a bit crude or guttural, and many people aren't going to get it or enjoy it, but some do, and that me….

Probably because I personally knew at least six or seven people in Ross County who died from overdoses in the last three years. The heroin epidemic i….

Knockemstiff is a collection of short stories set in the holler of the same name in southern Ohio where I grew up. I tried to link the stories togeth….

I really have no idea what the French think of my characters, or why The Devil All the Time did so well there..

Unless he had whiskey running through his veins, Willard came to the clearing every morning and evening to talk to God. Arvin didn't know which was w….

For example, if it's a sad scene, I need to feel that way, at least to a slight degree and for a short while, to get it right. Which is why I sometim….

J.R. Angelella is a truly gifted writer. Zombie is one of the smartest, strangest, and most beautifully crafted coming-of-age stories you will ever e….

[Degree in English] gave me a little more self-confidence, to know that I'd managed to complete something like that..

The Oxys filled holes in me I hadn't realized were empty. It was, at least for those first few months, a wonderful way to be disabled. I felt blessed..