Do people still shoot at presidents? I thought there were more stimulating targets.' (20)

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.

The present is the blocks with which we build.

The mighty hopes that make us men.

WINE, n.Fermented grape-juice known to the Women's Christian Union as "liquor," sometimes as "rum." Wine, madam, is God's next best gift to man.

There is no doubt that our nation's security and defeating terrorism trump all other priorities.

Who knows what women can be when they are finally free to become themselves?

Being a teenager isn't all that different from being part of someone else's story. There's always someone who thinks they know better than you do

There is what I would call the hero journey, the night sea journey, the hero quest, where the individual is going to bring forth in his life something that was never beheld before.

People always go on about sleaze, but I think it's only a small part of what I write about.

I used to roll up: this is a hold up, ain't nuthin funny. Stop smiling, be still, don't nuthin move but the money.

There hasn't been a day in my life since I started Latin in ninth grade that I haven't benefited by the lives of the ancients.