Some nights I need to be held. Tonight I'm a listener. So nice to lie in rumpled sheets and listen. Cover me with words.

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.

The only thing I hate about good people is that they like making their being good people bad people’s problem.

What one decides to do in crisis depends on one's philosophy of life and that philosophy cannot be changed by an incident. If one hasn't any philosophy in crises others make the decision.

I don't think with any book you get used to people falling in love with the story. It's been incredible just to realize your books are being read. It's a pretty amazing feeling.

The world lies right beyond the handlebars of any bicycle.

I'm very, very suspicious of anybody that finds a belief system that they feel can explain it all, for themselves or for anybody else.

A wise man will live as much within his wit as within his income.

You must have a bladder like Lake Erie. I think empires rose and fell in the time it took you to pee. I could hear it the whole time." Thank you. Do you want something?

Let us live without hate among those who hate

You guys make the rules up, so a foul is a foul. It doesn't matter if a guy is bigger and stronger. It's not my fault I ate my Frosted Flakes when I was little, and you ate Wheaties.

Homophobia is manufactured in high schools, so its probably useful to keep in mind that it really does bother people.