I came to realize that far more important to me than any plot or conventional sense was the sheer directionality I felt while reading prose, the texture of time as it passed, life's white machine.

When the narrator feels like an octopus, when he says his limbs are starting to multiply, he means he has inklings of orders of perception beyond his individual body.

Art has to offer something other than stylized despair.

I'm defending fiction as a human capacity more than as a popular or dying literary genre.

I’ll work my way from irony to sincerity in the sinking city, a would-be Whitman of the vulnerable grid.

Shaving is a way to start the workday by ritually not cutting your throat when you've the chance.

The transpersonal is more awe-inspiring, more exciting than the thing we confuse it for.

I have no interest in artists who are purely affirmative, who've made a commercialized fetish of the culture's stupidity.

Many of the left thinkers that really matter to me - that formed a big part of my thinking about politics and art - emphasize how capitalism is a totality, how there's no escape from it, no outside.

Experiments with the "as if" of fiction are often more lively in poetry and criticism and other modes of writing than in weak short stories or novels.

What interests me about fiction is, in part, its flickering edge between realism and where a tear in the fabric of a story lets in some other sort of light.

You will attract love when you are the source of love.

There is beauty in the soul of every man.

It's simple: either you have discipline or you haven't.

We lack rituals in this modern world.

Do not waste your time looking for an obstacle - maybe there is none.

Seek perfection of character. Be faithful. Endeavor. Respect others. Refrain from violent behaviour.

Farm animals, like dairy cows - who by nature are vegans - are routinely force-fed fish to increase their weight and milk production.

Aren’t you ever satisfied? I swear if I were mortal, I’d be limping from our last go-round. If not dead. We really need to find you a hobby other than jumping on top of me. (Acheron)

Every day there is only one thing to learn: how to be honestly happy.

When you check your own mind properly, you stop blaming others for your problems.