Fame requires every kind of excess. I mean true fame, a devouring neon, not the sombre renown of waning statesmen or chinless kings.

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.

If you are losing faith in human nature, go out and watch a marathon.

Jesus take the wheelTake it from my handsCause I can't do this on my ownI'm letting goSo give me one more chanceSave me from this road I'm onJesus take the wheel

Stevie Wonder's records introduced me to '70s soul when I was 12 or 13.

Her purse was a weight, ballast; it tethered her to the earth as her mind floated away.

I'm a fifth generation Jew from the South, and I would say that I felt this connection to my religion, but it wasn't a spiritual connection.

Adjusting to the requirement for perfection is, I think, the most difficult part of learning to program.

I have a house in Stratford and I got a house in Atlanta but I don't really live anywhere--I live on the road. I'm kind of like living in a suitcase, travelling so much.

I do think having a mother as a nurse who's a very kind of compass - , she's so compassionate and she really unfortunately would take her work home with her sometimes.

I got addicted to the addiction book. I actually started developing all the addictions of the people in the book that I was writing about, without realizing it.

Do the math: You never settle for less than the whole if you knew the half.