In some sense, prose fiction is just a way of unlocking a space. If I can unlock the space, it comes out and it's vivid, I find that I care about it, and it's part of me.

Spelling is a way to make words safe, at least for now, until another technology appears to soften attacks launched from the mouth.

Being with him was like being alone underwater - everything was slow; nothing counted; I could not be harmed; I would feel dry and cold when I resurfaced.

It amazes me that parents are allowed to raise kids. There's so much power and often very little accountability.

It's lonely to listen to the pleasure of others, not that I've made a habit of that kind of eavesdropping. There's joy and passion in the next room, in the next bed, but it's not yours.

Eventually you stop paying attention to your own feelings when there's nothing to be done about them.

I'm attracted to how fraught the parent-child relationship is, swerving so easily between love and hostility, with almost no plausible way to end, unless someone dies.

Suspense left my life a long time ago, now it has returned. I do not care for it.

A self needed to spill out sometimes, a body should show evidence of what the hell went on inside it.

A misspelled word is probably an alias for some desperate call for aid, which is bound to fail.

To refrain from storytelling is perhaps one of the highest forms of respect we can pay. Those people, with no stories to circle them, can die without being misunderstood.

One day a wolf bit a man and the man caught it. Magic or science, it's all the same. The only thing magical about it is that we can't explain it." ~Sam

Scientists are not delinquents. Our work has changed the conditions in which men live, but the use made of these changes is the problem of governments, not of scientists.

This arch-liar today shows that Britain never was in a position to wage war alone. This gabbler, this drunkard Churchill. And then his accomplice in the White House, this mad fool.

Growing food was the first activity that gave us enough prosperity to stay in one place, form complex social groups, tell our stories, and build our cities.

Salinger is a master of the memorable detail, the seemingly random gesture, the debris of mundane daily operations, the stuff that is left out of any analysis.

My records don't go platinum or gold. I think they go cedar.

I want to establish myself as the first Eric Davis, not the next Willie Mays.

Salzburg... is a mountain town with a rushing river running right through the center, everything in the rain various shades of green and brown.

You don’t think ahead in years or months: you think about this hour, and maybe the next. Anything else is speculation.

I stopped beating up on myself. I stopped asking myself why I didn't sell this number of records, why I don't have corporate sponsorship. I just don't buy into any of that anymore.