Everything was fine, would continue to be fine, would eventually get even better as long as the supermarket did not slip.

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.

Faith is fruitfulness.

The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter - often an unconscious but still a faithful interpreter - in the eye.

Don't ask me who's influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he's digested, and I've been reading all my life.

I would write about issues and people I met along the way, but not about the process and the life of being on the road.

Gentrification can be a plague, as it eats up neighborhoods.

People aren't hiring just a picture, they're hiring someone they can work with. That plays a big role .

Poetry and philosophy are, according to how you take them, different spheres, different forms, or factors of religion. Try to really combine both, and you will have nothing but religion.

I've never lost my capacity to be shocked.

I don't have to beat you. I don't have to beat you, motherfucker. I just have to keep you here... until Jean shows up.

We must understand variation.