I am, it seems, interested in people with multiple identities. I think we all have multiple identities.

Your memories from your early childhood seem to have such purchase on your emotions. They are so concrete.

Occupy Wall Street means making Wall Street and the corporate power elite understand that the people affected by the binge of unregulated greed are not going away, and they are not going to give up.

All roads lead to Wall Street, but we feel the effects of Wall Street on every street corner. Certainly in Syracuse, N.Y., where I live.

The issue isn't, Am I good enough? No. The issue is, Do I not have any other choice? Will and desire don't matter. Ability doesn't matter. Need is the only thing that matters.

The novel is about, for me, sustained and organized looking. I do think that people have a hunger for a sustained engagement, that concentration that the book can offer.

I am always trying to do something new and different. The first step is curiosity, questions. You pay attention to what fascinates you. If you can't shake it, there is something there.

In order to be a living, breathing thing, a novel has to be failed in some kind of way. Or at least that's how I keep writing them.

I have to say that movies have as much impact on me as music. And that I learned as much about narrative from movies as I did from reading novels, how to arrange stories, how to juxtapose things.

A good novel should be deeply unsettling - its satisfactions should come from its authenticity and its formal coherence. We must feel something crucial is at stake.

Yes, I did try acting when I was in high school and I was terrible at it. So I definitely have had the experience of being bad at artistic endeavor.

Success is likened to a deep pit, you have to jump in to get it, then you'll need a ladder of grace to climb out to enjoy it.

Clinton and his cigar was so much greater a man than Bush and his rifle.

The principles of living greatly include the capacity to face trouble with courage, disappointment with cheerfulness, and trial with humility.

No man in his senses can hesitate in choosing to be free, rather than a slave.

Silence has many advantages…I write and draw in my notebook and I read anything I please.

I've never seen more dishonest media than frankly, the political media. I thought the financial media was much better, much more honest.

Oh, the shark has pretty teeth, dear, And he shows them pearly white. Just a jackknife has Macheath, dear, And he keeps them out of sight.

We are identifying with what is passing so fear comes. We are trying to make steady and permanent what is by nature impermanent.

No one can will the will to will what it will not will!

If you don't let a teacher know what level you are -- by asking a question, or revealing your ignorance -- you will not learn or grow