America was and is the immigrant's dream.

I like the construction of sentences and the juxtaposition of words-not just how they sound or what they mean, but even what they look like.

I think more than writers, the major influences on me have been European movies, jazz, and Abstract Expressionism.

We seem to believe it is possible to ward off death by following rules of good grooming.

As technology advances in complexity and scope, fear becomes more primitive.

No sense of the irony of human experience, that we are the highest form of life on earth, and yet ineffably sad because we know what no other animal knows, that we must die.

I've come to think of Europe as a hardcover book, America as the paperback version.

I don’t want your candor. I want your soul in a silver thimble.

What we are reluctant to touch often seems the very fabric of our salvation.

California deserves whatever it gets. Californians invented the concept of life-style. This alone warrants their doom.

A writer takes earnest measures to secure his solitude and then finds endless ways to squander it.

Thank God every morning when you get up that you have something to do which must be done whether you like it or not.

There is a Sunday conscience as well as a Sunday coat; and those who make religion a secondary concern put the coat and conscience carefully by to put on only once a week.

The one that works the hardest comes out on top.

My father was a brew master. He was the one who I was very close to, he influenced me in many many ways including my pursuing a career as a brew master.

Nobody remembers who was the richest toga salesman in Rome.

I see the things and people and events in my daily world as an endless succession of paintings.

What are memories but dreams of a better past.

Flight is essential, but I can't let my fear show.

Burning fossil fuels has given us the gift of seeing ourselves in new ways. But that very gift now enables us to see we've got to change our ways.

It's only when it comes to crunch time that people's true character comes out.