Insanity's so personal. It's hard to know who shares our secrets.

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.

Feeling free is a choice that is ours for the making, ours for the taking at any time, at any age.

I don't have deal breakers, " Alan said. "I look on tempests, and am never shaken.

If you really serious ’bout helpin’ somebody, crawl down in the ditch with ’em, bandage up their wounds, and stick with ’em until they is strong enough to crawl up on your back and get out

Psychopaths... people who know the differences between right and wrong, but don't give a shit. That's what most of my characters are like.

For me, a kitchen is like science fiction. I only go there to open the refrigerator and take something out.

I can be attracted to a woman sexually, but it doesn't mean I want to be in love with a woman.

Take time to listen to what is said without words, to obey the law too subtle to be written, to worship the unnameable and to embrace the unformed.

My last meal? The food would be much less significant than the company.

Like any working mother I find it hard to have a social life. But my kids are so well adjusted. There isn't a brat bone in their body so I haven't done anything that bad.

'Forrest Gump' was great, it was fabulous. It lasted much longer than anybody thought, and brought me a degree of attention that no human being on the face of the planet deserves.