In cities no one notices specific dying. Dying is a quality of the air. It's everywhere and nowhere.

I like the construction of sentences and the juxtaposition of words-not just how they sound or what they mean, but even what they look like.

I think more than writers, the major influences on me have been European movies, jazz, and Abstract Expressionism.

We seem to believe it is possible to ward off death by following rules of good grooming.

As technology advances in complexity and scope, fear becomes more primitive.

No sense of the irony of human experience, that we are the highest form of life on earth, and yet ineffably sad because we know what no other animal knows, that we must die.

I've come to think of Europe as a hardcover book, America as the paperback version.

I don’t want your candor. I want your soul in a silver thimble.

What we are reluctant to touch often seems the very fabric of our salvation.

California deserves whatever it gets. Californians invented the concept of life-style. This alone warrants their doom.

A writer takes earnest measures to secure his solitude and then finds endless ways to squander it.

The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation's history. I mean in this century's history. But we all lived in this century. I didn't live in this century.

A planet without birds is a planet without angels!

I'm just thankful that even at a young age, I got to experience something like 'X Factor, ' and I got to meet enough people just to know that I needed to be patient until the right deal came around.

I enjoyed learning the poems, but I didn't understand of what use they might possibly be. ‘They'll keep you company on the day you have no books to read,' my teacher said.

Some of the funniest people I know are not screwed up in the head.

The Sun, Moon and Stars are there to guide us.

I feel more comfortable being honest because I don't have to "remember" my answers. You never forget the truth! I just have to learn how much truth to give, that's my boundary. That's my new thing.

The ref was vertically 15 yards away.

My dad wrote a song about the people in the slides. I started playing harmonica. I was only six.

Maybe we should be a little bit more tender-hearted.