I often think I can see it in myself and in other young writers, this desperate desire to please coupled with a kind of hostility to the reader.

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.

when things are not happening the way you expect them to be know that something is happening the way God plan it for you

The speech of God’s beautiful woman is a fountain of life to those around her.

In joy or sadness flowers are our constant friends.

When everything starts going wrong all at once, it is to protect something big and lovely that is trying to get itself born.

New York City is crazy and beautiful and really close to my heart, and I've always had dear friends here - family, actually, I would say.

I've always loved the fact that Bob's [Dylan] been able to sustain his mystery over 50 or 60 years.

For years, I was often afraid to speak up when I didn't fully understand a script. I'd tie myself in knots.

The only way to be who you want to be is by being what you haven't yet been.

We ain't meant to survive, cause it's a setup, And even though you're fed up, Huh, ya got to keep your head up.

One only needs to see a smile in a white crape bonnet in order to enter the palace of dreams.