I felt Joyce was an influence on my fiction, but in a very general way, as a kind of inspiration and a model for the beauty of language.

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.

We have to try to beat Everyone.

I've decided that it's possible to love someone for entirely selfless reasons, for all of their flaws and weaknesses, and still not succeed in having them love you back.

A gentle focus of attention is all it takes to free the body of minor imbalances.

Learn from your mistakes, trying to figure out what the best way to go forward is.

I hate nobody: I am in charity with the world.

People like everything to work out, and anytime you don't make everything work out perfectly, you really are fighting against what most people are going to the movies for, especially in the summer.

Democrats are like a big tortoise that's on its back and can't get up; you can't make jokes about that.

No one can tell you what your path is . . . but someday you'll discover it. . . and it won't be at all what you expected.

But the truth is a double-edged sword; it is a dangerous thing.

I'm from the same planet as David Bowie.