I have lots of things that aren't so old that I value, such as a copy of Allen Ginsberg's "Howl," which he signed for me.

Now a Protestant confronting a Catholic ghost is exactly Shakespeare's way of grappling with what was not simply a general social problem but one lived out in his own life.

My father who in this case was an obsessive life-long storyteller, and by a very peculiar trick of my father's. My father would tell a very, very long story, and the punch line would be in Yiddish.

First of all, there was a volcano of words, an eruption of words that Shakespeare had never used before that had never been used in the English language before. It's astonishing. It pours out of him.

One of my favorite writers is Michel de Montaigne. My wife gave me a beautiful 17th-century edition of Montaigne's essays translated by John Florio. That's probably my most precious possession.

Compared to the unleashed forces of warfare and of faith, Mount Vesuvius was kinder to the legacy of antiquity.

The greatest obstacle to pleasure is not pain; it is delusion.

I believe that nothing comes of nothing, even in Shakespeare. I wanted to know where he got the matter he was working with and what he did with that matter.

No special writing rituals. And my desk is usually cluttered.

What I wanted to do was to get that sense of being in touch with this lost world while holding onto what draws readers and audiences there in the first place.

I think the writing of literature should give pleasure. What else should it be about? It is not nuclear physics. It actually has to give pleasure or it is worth nothing.

I know that men are so eager to be one among the stars.I feel that damaged earth will never let men go off hand.

I think writers are the most narcissistic people. Well, I musn't say this, I like many of them, a great many of my friends are writers.

It depends on ourselves to be to each others, either a blessing or a torment.

We've always had a lot of different influences and we've always liked catchy music from the Beatles to Cheap Trick to Elvis Costello.

I think that really, when we look at this whole process, we can come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as a moderate Democrat, that fundamentally all Democrats are Democrats.

It is said that love and a cough cannot be hid.

I would visualize things coming to me. It would just make me feel better. Visualization works if you work hard. That's the thing. You can't just visualize and go eat a sandwich.

The health of the second amendment is the primary indicator of the overall health of the nation.

An Osage tribal study found that between $41 million to $50 million left a 50-mile radius around their own casino

The experience of the human race indicates strongly that the only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetent.