I was a violent, bipolar, compulsive liar. I was a real American.

When the narrator feels like an octopus, when he says his limbs are starting to multiply, he means he has inklings of orders of perception beyond his individual body.

Art has to offer something other than stylized despair.

I'm defending fiction as a human capacity more than as a popular or dying literary genre.

I’ll work my way from irony to sincerity in the sinking city, a would-be Whitman of the vulnerable grid.

Shaving is a way to start the workday by ritually not cutting your throat when you've the chance.

The transpersonal is more awe-inspiring, more exciting than the thing we confuse it for.

I came to realize that far more important to me than any plot or conventional sense was the sheer directionality I felt while reading prose, the texture of time as it passed, life's white machine.

I have no interest in artists who are purely affirmative, who've made a commercialized fetish of the culture's stupidity.

Many of the left thinkers that really matter to me - that formed a big part of my thinking about politics and art - emphasize how capitalism is a totality, how there's no escape from it, no outside.

Experiments with the "as if" of fiction are often more lively in poetry and criticism and other modes of writing than in weak short stories or novels.

Deal with my weird

Adventures, I reflected, are all very fine but a certain amount of civilised comfort forms the true kernel of our desires.

The way that I approach helping is to first make sure that I understand.

Florida feels we owe a great debt to our neighboring states.

He [Gandhi] was not one of those saints who are marked out by their phenomenal piety from childhood onwards, nor one of the other kind who forsake the world after sensational debaucheries.

Trial by jury must be preserved. It is the best system ever invented for a free people in the world's history.

We empower ourselves every time we accept responsibility for choosing the thoughts and feelings we act on.

Deceit and treachery skulk with hatred, but an honest spirit flieth with anger.

My work as a human being is to quiet my mind, open my heart and do what I can to relieve the suffering with as much wisdom, skill, whatever I got.

I'm not wild about accepting responsibility without authority. Why should my people be?