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

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.

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.

Being a man of taste and sophistication, the 80s were objectively, quantifiably, empirically, diagram-it-on-a-blackboard the worst decade in the history of recorded music.

I take issue with many people's description of people being illegal Immigrants. There aren't any illegal Human Beings as far as I'm concerned.

Dreams can be deceiving, like faces are to hearts.

The pride of the body is a barrier against the gifts that purify the soul.

The hours here are flat and round, disks of gray layered one on top of the other...they move slowly, at a grind, until it seems as though they are not moving at all. They are just pressing down.

When you get older, keeping the private stuff private seems less important.

We go to literature because it shows us some set of humane values. It is showing us how to live.

Novelty is the storehouse of pleasure.

Technology is probably the single biggest driver of productivity gains for the developed countries. For example, I think it's much more important than free trade.

The sky the sky- same as it always was.

What looks like multitasking is really switching back and forth between multiple tasks, which reduces productivity and increases mistakes by up to 50 percent.