Doesn't our knowledge of death make life more precious?' What good is a preciousness based on fear and anxiety? It's an anxious quivering thing

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.

Invest money and you'll get a check. Invest in people and you'll get time.

When you pay attention to man, God also reciprocates with His attention

To speak of television as 'neutral' and therefore subject to change is as absurd as speaking of the reform of a technology such as guns.

It's one thing to just play a tune, or play a program of music, but it's another thing to practically create a new language of music, which is what 'Kind of Blue' did.

What people see in the news are places where things have not going so well.

The best movies have one sentence that they're exploring, a thesis, something that people can argue about over dinner afterward.

I describe a world with no exit, convinced that God accompanies man throughout his history.

After immersing myself in the mysteries of the Electoral College for a novel I wrote in the '90s, I came away believing that the case for scrapping it is less obvious than I originally thought.

All of a sudden you realise that you are the person who has control of your life.

I don't believe I could work as effectively at what I do without the support of my wife.