Clouds are no deterrent. Clouds intensify the drama, trap and shape the light.

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.

I do not know everything. I ought to keep learning.

We were each other's rock. But did it make us each other's destiny?

there is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock

My despair is less despair than boredom and loneliness.

Suffering... is not just lots of pain but pain amplified by distinctly human emotions such as regret, self-pity, shame, humiliation, and dread.

I don't think anyone is free - one creates one's own prison.

Fear and self-doubt have always been the greatest enemies of human potential.

You can change things, you can make things better.

If you believe in yourself you can make yourself whatever you want to be.

We had a dog, Lucky, who was fourteen years old. For the last year of his life, I would take him on these walks that were long but didn't cover much distance.