It's true that some of us become better writers by living long enough. But this is also how we become worse writers. The trick is to die in between.

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.

Liberty is terrifying but it is also exhilarating.

Am I Latin? Am I American? What the hell am I? I love my culture and I'm very proud of my culture

After scolding one's cat one looks into its face and is seized by the ugly suspicion that it understood every word. And has filed it for reference.

I rode many bikes and motorcycles. My brother was in an accident when he was a kid and my mom forbade us to use motorcycles.

Art that imposes conditions - human or otherwise - on the receiver for its appreciation in my eyes constitutes aesthetic fascism.

Lust is the cause of generation Appetite is the support of life Fear or timidity is the prolongation of life, and Fraud the preservation of its instruments.

I am too impatient to wait for temptation to come to me.

What saved the economy, and the New Deal, was the enormous public works project known as World War II, which finally provided a fiscal stimulus adequate to the economy’s needs.

All of life is the management of risk, not its elimination.