Only a catastrophe gets our attention. We want them, we depend on them. As long as they happen somewhere else.

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.

Characters who simply have goals opposed by others do not create the effects of a story.

When we are unable to shine that natural light within, it burns us from our very core.

Home gives you something no other place can... your history. Home is where your history begins.

Those who hurt, Screw up, if you are lucky Demons will let you watch.

Different taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.

He wasn’t a carrier of commitment-phobia or other notable boy diseases and he used expensive moisturizer. That’s about all it takes to bang my gong.

People should realize we're jerks just like them.

To act is easy; to think is hard.

The magi, as you know, were wise men wonderfully wise men who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents.

The characters are the plot. What they do and say and the things that happen to them are, in a sense, what the plot is. You can't take character and plot apart from each other, really.