It's fine, precise, detailed work, the infinitely small motor management of diamond cutters and safecrackers that we do in our heads.

I don't believe less is more. I believe that more is more. I believe that less is less, fat fat, thin thin and enough is enough.

The peculiar dignity of men seen eating alone in restaurants on national holidays

Writing is an exercise in sculpture, chipping away at the rock until you find the nose.

Life's tallest order is to keep the feelings up, to make two dollars' worth of euphoria go the distance. And life can't do that. So fiction does.

I would never write about anyone who is not at the end of his rope.

Like a lot of what happens in novels, inspiration is a sort of spontaneous combustion--the oily rags of the head and heart.

The furthest out is the only place to be.

But it's hard to talk about art. Maybe there should be a law against it, some First Amendment gag order like crying fire in a crowded theater.

The living and dead were thrown together, and the dead looked away first.-Description of Doomsday

To speak a language is to take on a world, a culture.

My soul sings joyful praise to the Holy one.

There is no greater beast than envy, no greater thief than fear, no greater enemy than greed, no greater predator than wrath, and no greater poison than bitterness.

And when you clear away the cobwebs of the description of every job in the world, at the bottom of that job is service. It's service. And I took that ethic and applied it to my writing craft.

Well I am afraid that I am going to die, because I have just put a down payment on a house.

I don't like doing [things] as myself...I like to be made into someone else.

To chase the glowing hours with flying feet.

There is nothing more notable in Socrates than that he found time, when he was an old man, to learn music and dancing, and thought it time well spent.

I love films where the world seems to be going a bit faster and everything's a bit brighter and more in focus.

I've been reading a book lately. That book is Thom Yorke, and the conclusion is that he's brilliant.