I write almost purely by instinct. I've never made an outline.

When L.A.’s schizophrenia between Dreamland and Utopia was becoming socially manifest, the United States, which was always a place, went to war with America, which was always an idea.

a dream is only a memory of the future

Western music is arguably America's greatest contribution to the 20th century, cultural or otherwise.

If I had it to do all over again . . . I wouldn't change a thing.'. . . the final expression of narcissism, the last gesture of self-congratulation.

By the plain form of my delirium I will blast the obstruction of every form around me into something barely called shadow. I sail. I swim to you. I know the water.

In LA, you think you're making something up, but it's making you up.

To me experimental fiction ultimately is about the experiment and I'm not interested in experiments for their own sake.

Is the humanism intuitive or labored over?, the answer is: Yes. It begins intuitively, it becomes the reason for writing the thing, and then it's to be considered and fine-tuned and even calculated.

While I do believe I become a technically better writer over time, in others ways writing gets harder because inspiration is finite.

For better or worse I'm the writer I am today because of hearing those Dylan records. For better and most certainly not for worse, I'm the person I am today because of hearing Charles.

Become more committed to seeing what's right about you than you are to seeing what's wrong, and soon you'll start to feel a lot different about yourself.

Some people make a difference, some people make you different.

If have the gift of prophesy, all wisdom and knowledge and have no love, I have failed to manifest my true soul.

It's how you deal with failure that determines how you achieve success.

My home was in a pleasant place outside of Philadelphia. But I really lived, truly lived, somewhere else. I lived within the covers of books.

Downton Abbey is the most popular drama in the history of public television. When the whole of the TV universe is fragmenting, that isn't just impressive. It's almost impossible. But here we are.

One favourite find of mine has to be a 1980s black dinner jacket that I wear as a dress.

If you believe in democracy, why shouldn't you know what the government is doing?

Faith guides even us and we follow its sure light on the way which conducts us to God and His homeland.

Trust life. If you trust, only then can you drop your knowledge, only then can you put your mind aside.