I couldn't go on, too conscious all at once of my whispering, my eternal posturing, always transforming the world with words--changing nothing.

Self pity is easily the most destructive of the non-pharmaceutical narcotics; it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality.

Talking, talking. Spinning a web of words, pale walls of dreams, between myself and all I see.

We read five words on the first page of a really good novel and we begin to forget that we are reading printed words on a page; we begin to see images.

What art ought to do is tell stories which are moment-by-moment wonderful, which are true to human experience, and which in no way explain human experience.

The citizen can bring our political and governmental institutions back to life, make them responsive and accountable, and keep them honest. No one else can.

Fiction does not spring into the world fully grown, like Athena. It is the process of writing and rewriting that makes a fiction original, if not profound.

Art, of course, is a way of thinking, a way of mining reality.

As a rule of thumb I say, if Socrates, Jesus and Tolstoy wouldn't do it, don't.

When people are serving, life is no longer meaningless.

One of the many interesting challenges nature presents us is its apparent disinterest in maintaining the order humans crave.

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.

Be slow to resolve, but quick in performance.

I stood among them, but not of them: in a shroud of thoughts which were not their thoughts.

I'm not sure about my design work every time.

I'm learning to say 'y'all' and, I like grits... Strange things are happening to me.

I would lock myself in my room and drink a case of Corona and smoke a load of pot.

And every day when I've been good, I get an orange after food.

I've never thought of myself as a great beauty -- just a great magician.

I love flat shoes, more so than heels. One of my obsessions is men's co-respondent lace-ups.

If I ventured in the slipstream between the viaducts of your dreams, where immobile steel rims crack and the ditch in the back roads stop. Could you find me?