I think literature has lost it's power. Great novels continue to be written, but they are no longer changing the world.

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.

You must stay away from the one who brings nothing but heartache and death. Do you hear me? He brings nothing but death. Always has.

The power of imagination makes us infinite.

Racing, competing, it's in my blood. It's part of me, it's part of my life; I have been doing it all my life and it stands out above everything else.

I need you by me, beside me, to guide me, to hold me, to scold me, cause when I'm bad, I'm so, so bad.

I find, by close observation, that the mothers are the levers which move in education. The men talk about it . . . but the women work most for it.

You will win with either color if you are the better player, but it takes longer with Black.

So the first thing you need to do about conflict is to prevent it, and the best way of preventing it is by dealing with the question of poverty.

It is the leader's job to hold hope high.

I don't give concerts, I put on a show.

Besides learning to see, there is another art to be learned - not to see what is not.