I resist when someone calls me a novelist: it implies some kind of inherent superiority of the novel. I'm not a novelist, I'm a writer.

When I look at my old pictures, all I can see is what I used to be but am no longer. I think: What I can see is what I am not.

Home is where somebody notices when you are no longer there.

The perfect borscht is what life should be but never is.

Belief and delusion are incestuous siblings.

I am itching to criticize some well-regarded writers' works, but I am not doing it because I am perfectly aware that my critique could easily be reduced to envy or just plain meanness.

I gradually became aware that my interiority was inseparable from my exteriority, that the geography of my city was the geography of my soul.

I much preferred winning to thinking and I didn't like losing at all.

You don't want your neurosurgeon to have doubts about the meaning of it all while he or she is operating on your brain.

If you can't go home, there is nowhere to go, and nowhere is the biggest place in the world-indeed, nowhere is the world.

We knew - but didn't want to know - what was going to happen, the sky descending upon our heads like the shadow of a falling piano in a cartoon.

In still moments by the sea life seems large-drawn and simple. It is there we can see into ourselves.

You are serving someone for the rest of your life, not knowing a time must come when you must also be served.

Tomorrow when you wake up, be aware of how you dress your thoughts and emotions, because at the end of the day no matter what you look like, if your inner being isn't beautiful, neither are you.

Evil isn't born...Neither is purity. Because even as newborns, there is something wrong inside of all of us bound to spring up and activate itself within us.

You don't want to engage in road rage when the person in the next car might be your child's future teacher or your dentist's father.

I've always eaten well and have a balanced diet.

... I felt like a new man; but I was disappointed with the photographic documentation because I still saw always the old self.

As far as the bands that are reforming now, it's always nice to see old friends and hear some of those great songs, but it's just not our thing.

We have nothing to do, but to choose what is right, to be steady in the pursuit of it, and leave the issue to Providence.

Death but supplies the oil for the inextinguishable lamp of life.