...being alone with him was like being in a room which someone had just violently left

Fictional characters are made of words, not flesh; they do not have free will, they do not exercise volition. They are easily born, and as easily killed off.

In order really to write one has to sink deep into the self and become lost there.

All my life I have lied. I lied to escape, I lied to be loved, I lied for placement and power; I lied to lie. It was a way of living; lies are life's almost-anagram.

The past beats inside me like a second heart.

If I was asked to say what was the greatest invention of human beings, I would say the sentence.

Everything we do is tinged with the knowledge that this may be the last time that we will do this, and that makes what we're doing incredibly sweet.

We carry the dead with us only until we die too, and then it is we who are borne along for a little while, and then our bearers in their turn drop, and so on into the unimaginable generations.

To take possession of a city of which you are not a native you must first fall in love there.

For memory, we use our imagination. We take a few strands of real time and carry them with us, then like an oyster we create a pearl around them.

A man is not much if he can't depend on himself, and nothing if others can't depend on him.

Wonder feeds our best intelligence and is perhaps its source.

Freedom is what's left when the belief systems deconstruct.

A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilisation

Homecoming's stupid." And it is. Buch of kids looking for excuses to grope eachother all night.

Going up north with the redwoods and driving along the coast, it's got everything, man. It's got the desert, the mountains, and the ocean. It's beautiful.

If we were to hit the level that Metallica or somebody like that hit, we'd have had a hard time dealing with it. I think it would have been our doom. It's hard for anybody at that level.

To win, we will need to keep building the movement, networking with one another, planning, strategizing, and moving forward. Our children's futures, and those of their unborn children, are at stake.

At its best, film should be like a ski jump. It should give the viewer the option of taking flight, while the act of jumping is left up to him.

The obscurest epoch is to-day.

My parents were liberal intellectuals but even they expected me to stay at home and look after my younger siblings and do the housework.