We surrounded ourselves with smoke and loud noise. That's the way we chose to live. I'm prepared to defend it.

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.

The fact that we can never have complete, perfect knowledge does not absolve us of the moral duty to judge and to take a stand against evil.

All concerns of men go wrong when they wish to cure evil with evil.

In a gentle way, you can shake the world

The only failure a man ought to fear is failure in cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.

I got sick of trying everything. I tried every single thing imaginable - diet, exercise. I even bought a house on the health spa property, and I still gained weight.

If you can't find your own center and love for yourself, nothing else works.

Magic comprises the most profound contemplation of the most secret things, their nature, power, quality, substance, and virtues, as well as the knowledge of their whole nature.

Our circumstances answer to our expectations and the demand of our natures.

One must be a little foolish if one does not want to be even more stupid.

Unlike other Jewish families, we didn't go out for Chinese food on Sundays, but we spent our time in a world of baking powder biscuits and the best shrimp cocktails that ever were.