If I take a less defensive tone, I'd admit that I couldn't write today a very jazzy, contemporary look at America as I did in 1979 in States of Desire.

Biography can be the most middle-class of all forms, the judgment of little people avenging themselves on the great.

The most important things in our intimate lives can't be discussed with strangers, except in books.

I think that there are empty ecological niches in the literary landscape crying to be filled and when a book more or less fills a niche it's seized on, even when it's a far from perfect fit...

I think sincerity was my sole aesthetic and realism my experimental technique.

Paris... is a world meant for the walker alone, for only the pace of strolling can take in all the rich (if muted) detail.

As a young teenager I looked desperately for things to read that might excuse me or assure me I wasn't the only one, that might confirm an identity I was unhappily piecing together

Tennessee Williams recognized that great theater begins with great talkers, and that great talkers obey two rules: they never sound like anyone else and they never say anything directly.

Ive always seen writing as a way of telling the truth. For me, writing is about truth. I have always tried to be faithful to my own experience.

I didn't want to write a biographie romancee especially since I already write novels, nor did I want to challenge the rules of the biography game, arbitrary as those rules might be

At certain crucial moments - an emergency or an opportunity - one must act first and think later.

Bad things happen, Mathew. We can't see them coming, and there's often nothing we can do to prevent them. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't all live life to its fullest.

Every hip-hop artist I have worked with has a respect for higher power, whether that's church, Allah, or any sort of higher being - they all have a humbleness.

Trust has to be earned, and should come only after the passage of time.

A style does not go out of style as long as it adapts itself to its period

I live my life like there's no yesterday.

We are all missionaries. Wherever we go we either bring people nearer to Christ or we repel them from Christ.

If you have any notion of where you are going, you will never get anywhere.

My favorite venues are the 2,000 seat theaters, like the Warfield. If there was a Warfield in every city, I would play it. That's all I would do. I love venues like that.

Vampires are make-believe, like elves, gremlins, and eskimos.

An individual has a healthy personality to the exact degree to which they have the propensity to look for the good in every situation.