In a way my reputation has become that of the curmudgeon.

That element of surprise is what I look for when I am writing. It is my way of judging what I am doing - which is never an easy thing to do.

The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.

One isn’t born one’s self. One is born with a mass of expectations, a mass of other people’s ideas – and you have to work through it all.

Most people are not really free. They are confined by the niche in the world that they carve out for themselves. They limit themselves to fewer possibilities by the narrowness of their vision.

It is wrong to have an ideal view of the world. That's where the mischief starts. That's where everything starts unravelling.

The only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves.

Home is, I suppose just a child's idea. A house at night, and a lamp in the house. A place to feel safe.

One always writes comedy at the moment of deepest hysteria.

The world is always in movement.

All the details of the life and the quirks and the friendships can be laid out for us, but the mystery of the writing will remain. No amount of documentation, however fascinating, can take us there.

I took up windsurfing to explore my own courage.

To know your purpose, you must identify yourself in the world and know who you are in the world

The rule of reason is the true sovereign in the American system.

All things are dark to sorrow.

There is such wonderful balm in self-imposed sacrifice.

I'm too fast, too sexy and too talented to be blown away by a large, slow robot from the Ukraine.

You never exist quite so much as when you are not thinking

As Eric Dolphy said 'Once you play the music, it's in the air. It's gone'. And that's true. But when you record it, it comes back to haunt you sometimes.

If I turn on the television, am I to believe that that is America? I'm sorry, I don't believe that's America.

I think twenty-somethings are very cause-oriented.