The smoke alarm went off in the hallway upstairs, either to let us know the battery had just died or because the house was on fire.

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.

So what if the airin Paris smells of romance?My shirt smells of you.

Rich people were not rich if there were no poor.

she delighted in being of the same substance as them, and in knowing that when she died her flesh would nourish other lives as they had nourished her.

I got my hat pulled up low and no one can really see me. I'm ducked out. People do recognize me, and I have a pretty interesting fan base. It's a diverse group.

Believe only what you yourself test and judge to be true.

I hate stuff in my pockets, can't stand it. I'll carry stuff in my hands rather than put it in my pockets.

Why in the case of the ear, is there withdrawal and turning inward, a making resonant, but in the case of the eye, there is manifestation and display, a making evident?

Even though we can't communicate using the same language, we use music instead.

I want to destigmatize the words mental illness.

I don't accept the idea that literature can be just entertainment and that there is no consequences of literature in the real world.