The job of the first eight pages is not to have the reader want to throw the book at the wall, during the first eight pages.

I do things like get in a taxi and say, "The library, and step on it.

It can become an exercise in trying to get the reader to like and admire you instead of an exercise in creative art.

One of the things that makes Wittgenstein a real artist to me is that he realized that no conclusion could be more horrible than solipsism.

If your fidelity to perfectionism is too high, you never do anything.

I know I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?

This might be one way to start talking about differences between the early postmodern writers of the fifties and sixties and their contemporary descendants.

How odd I can have all this inside me and to you it’s just words.

Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.

In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.

In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard's vote.

Almost every truly creative being alienated & expatriated in his own country

Do you know what the difference is between PR and advertising? Advertising is when you say how great you are. PR is when other people say how great you are. PR is better.

The exchange of words is a lot like a virtual handshake. Is the writer's grasp of the language strong and bold? Are the words gripping? Direct? Inventive? Sincere?

Levity is often less foolish and gravity less wise than each of them appears.

Whatever happens, the flame of the French resistance must not be extinguished and will not be extinguished. Tomorrow, as today, I will speak on Radio London.

The profound meaning of music's essential aim... is to produce a communion, a union of man with his fellow man with the Supreme Being

Wayne's World' is my all time favorite comedy. I used to watch it on VHS on repeat with my brother when I was ten years old.

If you don't feel comfortable playing a role, if you're in a scenario that's not conducive for that kind of environment, then that's when you don't do well.

A building has at least two lives - the one imagined by its maker and the life it lives afterward - and they are never the same.

Perhaps most excitingly, we are uncovering the brain basis of our behaviors - normal, abnormal and in-between. We are mapping a neurobiology of what makes us us.