There came a time in every prolonged effort when he had a moment of near panic, or 'terror in a lonely place', the original semantic content of the word. The lonely place was his own mind.

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.

hit with your fist, not with your finger spread

Every interaction presents an opportunity for growth, one of the keys to our limitless potential.

Truth is like beauty

Love is like that. It's like a wildfire in my blood.

I imagine there are things I wouldn't do, but I haven't been offered those recently either.

A religion cannot be sustained by the number of its lip-followers denying in their lives its tenets.

It is a rare life that remains orderly even in private.

The truly beautiful are often abused for apparent ugliness just as those with great vision often bump into things.

You would better educate ten women into the practice of liberal principles than to organize a thousand on a platform of intolerance and bigotry.