At college I'd seen my dead frog's limbs twitch under some applied stimulus or other - seen, but hadn't believed. Didn't dream of thinking beyond or around what I saw.

Strange about parents. We have such easy access to them and such daunting problems of communication.

The day is breaking someone else's heart.

Before trying a novel I wrote a couple of plays.

Class is classlessness.

The simplest science book is over my head.

Arthur Young's Reflexive Universe - fascinating but too schematic to fit into my scheme. The most I could hope for was a sense of the vocabulary and some possible images.

But those two plays left me on fresh terms with language. I didn't always have to speak in my own voice.

In life, there are no perfect affections.

Whether you convert that diminishing life into something or you don’t convert it to anything is up to you. The life will keep on reducing and diminishing.

Mental disorders don't really live 'out there' waiting to be explained. They are constructs we have made up - and often not very compelling ones.

Home is where you go to when you've nowhere to go.

The conversational overachiever is someone whose grasp exceeds his reach. This is possible but not attractive.

Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. Call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically, that was really, really critical for the thing to pass.

A novel should be an experience and convey an emotional truth rather than arguments.

I'm the guy that made Joe DiMaggio famous.

My life was once whiskey, tears and cigarettes... now it's snot, tears and a color of poop. Bliss. I do miss the whiskey, though.

Whenever the average intellect of the clergy declines in the balance with the average intellect of the people the churches will be shut up and a new order of things [will] begin.

My friends keep telling me I'm doing it with Mary Palmer. That's not true - I'm too busy masturbating to meet anyone new.