Sports movies are often very good at dramatizing the intersection of public and private realms: the body politic.

Anything processed by memory is fiction.

My medium is prose, not the novel.

Everything I write, I believe instinctively, is to some extent collage. Meaning, ultimately, is a matter of adjacent data.

I don’t know what’s the matter with me, why I’m so adept at distance, why I feel so remote from things, why life feels like a rumor.

A book should either allow us to escape existence or teach us how to endure it.

To me, the moment you're talking about nonfiction you're talking about reality.

If I'm reading a book and it seems truly interesting, I tend to start reading back to front in order not to be too deeply under the sway of progress.

Momentum, in literary mosaic, derives not from narrative but from the subtle, progressive buildup of thematic resonances.

The absence of plot leaves the reader room to think about other things.

Resolution and conclusion are inherent in a plot-driven narrative.

You determine the destiny of the nation, this is your time

Do all the work you while you still have strength.

We only pass everything by like a transposition of air.

I mean, Emily Harris was his wife. And she seemed to resent his leadership, but on the other hand, she felt like a good soldier, that he had to be the leader.

I was serious about retiring the first time, but the first week I was home my wife had SO many chores to do I went back.

Some movie I was in, I forget which one, some awful little movie, a reviewer said, What is Jessica Walter doing in this movie? And I said, Hello? Trying to make a living?

Make your faces so that they do not all have the same expression, as one sees with most painters, but give them different expression, according to age, complexion, and good or bad character.

In mindfulness one is not only restful and happy, but alert and awake. Meditation is not evasion; it is a serene encounter with reality.

I’m so confused it almost feels calm.

Hat = wizard, wizard = hat. Everything else is frippery.