I think more than writers, the major influences on me have been European movies, jazz, and Abstract Expressionism.

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.

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.

Human existence had to have a deeper source than our own dank fluids. Dank or rank. There had to be a force behind it, a principal being who was and is and ever shall be.

I'll be singing with The Blind Boys of Alabama, which is a great joy to me. I've done some work with them before, and they truly are amazing.

Liberalization and democratization are in essence counter-revolution.

Well, all the plays that I was trying to write were plays that would grab an audience by the throat and not release them, rather than presenting an emotion which you could observe and walk away from.

I love theater. I love sitting in an audience and having the actors right there, playing out what it means to be a human being.

It were not best that we should all think alike.

I also like flyfishing - maybe I would have figured a way to make a living out of that?

I'm just going to do me; I'm not trying to do the Eminem thing, the D12 thing or the 50 thing.

Grammar is the logic of speech, even as logic is the grammar of reason.

If there is any secret to my success, I think it's that my characters are very real to me. I feel everything they feel, and therefore I think my readers care about them.

I am so honored to be a voice for those who no longer have a physical voice.