His ambition was to insert his dreams into the world, and if they were the wrong dreams, then he would dream them in solitude.

God pity the poor novelist.

I had thought that words were instruments of precision. Now I know that they devour the world, leaving nothing in its place.

All words are masks and the lovelier they are, the more they are meant to conceal.

Stories, like conjuring tricks, are invented because history is inadequate for our dreams.

In the long dusks of summer we walked the suburban streets through scents of maple and cut grass, waiting for something to happen.

I’m pleased by anything in myself that strikes me as not myself.

Perhaps sound is only an insanity of silence, a mad gibber of empty space grown fearful of listening to itself and hearing nothing.

I saw that I was in danger of becoming ordinary, and I understood that from now on I would have to be vigilant.

We know nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Ennui had more distractions far more amusing than the automatons of a watchmaker in Mühlenberg.

Can't figure women. Sometimes they're afraid of a spider, other times they're not afraid to stand right up to the devil.

Prayer has marked the trees across the wilderness of a skeptical world to direct the traveler in distress and all paths lead to a single light.

Some men, like modern shops, hang everything in their show windows; when one goes inside, nothing is to be found.

When you're lecturing teenagers and they begin to hum and leave the room, you can sense there is hostility.

I work with people like Spielberg and Abrams all the time.

As a member of the New York Senate from 1966 to 1989, I voted 12 times to establish the death penalty in New York... I regret my votes in favor of the death penalty.

The equality of play was a surprise-it was the most competitive race in the seven-year history of MLS.

I am only an actress when they say, 'action' and I stop being an actress when they say, 'cut'. I am a normal person outside of acting.

When I was a younger man and had a life, I owned an El Camino pickup in the '70s. It was a real sort of Southern deal. I had Astroturf in the back.

I don't like meeting bands that I like, because in the slight case that they might not be cool, it kind of ruins it for me.