For me, art that's alive and urgent is about what it is to be a human being.

I do things like get in a taxi and say, "The library, and step on it.

It can become an exercise in trying to get the reader to like and admire you instead of an exercise in creative art.

One of the things that makes Wittgenstein a real artist to me is that he realized that no conclusion could be more horrible than solipsism.

If your fidelity to perfectionism is too high, you never do anything.

I know I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?

This might be one way to start talking about differences between the early postmodern writers of the fifties and sixties and their contemporary descendants.

How odd I can have all this inside me and to you it’s just words.

Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.

In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.

In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard's vote.

Swirling around my ears, the wind and I whooping at the sea, picking up speed, breathing it all in. An act of loving life.

The pain of not knowing what to do was exceeded only by that of knowing what I had done.

Openness to all attitudes no matter how extreme or unrealistic they may seem.

We are living in a world in which all wars are wars of defense.

Our greatest evil flows from ourselves.

Think of it as Angelina Jolie. You’ve heard she’s mad and eats nothing but wallpaper paste. But you would, wouldn’t you?

The greatest genius will not be worth much if he pretends to draw exclusively from his own resources

Have you ever looked inside one of those things [computers]? It's a whole hierarchy of angels- all on slats. And those little tubes-those are miracles.

We can best help you to prevent war not by repeating your words and following your methods but by finding new words and creating new methods.

Men fed upon carnage, and drinking strong drinks, have all an impoisoned and acrid blood which drives them mad in a hundred different ways.