In my experience, writing a novel tends to create its own structure, its own demands, its own language, its own ending.

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.

Stealing to eat ain’t criminal—stealing to be rich is.

Start to laugh and everything will go well.

I'm not a person who can spontaneously say funny things.

Learning is never aversive - usually we are not aware of it at all. It is failure to learn that is frustrating and boring, and so is having to attend to nonsensical activities.

I met Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Engels and Mao when I entered prison and they redeemed me.

A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that.

You don't have to think too hard when you talk to teachers.

Because there were all kinds of hell - some were black and dirty, and some were silvery and high.

My parents wanted me to solace them for sorrows they denied having had.

The least thing upset him on the links. He missed short putts because of the uproar of the butterflies in the adjoining meadows.