'The Iliad' includes some snappy sports reporting, and writers ever since have been probing athletes for signifiers, for metaphor amped by grit under pressure.

Well, it arose out of two long-term concerns - the first being the possibility of genetic manipulation, nature versus nurture, what constitutes how people get to be how they are.

Let's just say, the American school of suburban angst is not my cup of tea.

Prior to penicillin and medical research, death was an everyday occurrence. It was intimate.

They thought to use and shame me but I win out by nature, because a true freak cannot be made. A true freak must be born.

I have been a believer in the magic of language since, at a very early age, I discovered that some words got me into trouble and others got me out.

The truth is always an insult or a joke, lies are generally tastier. We love them. The nature of lies is to please. Truth has no concern for anyone's comfort

Women who pay their own rent don't have to be nice.

Every doorway, every intersection has a story.

I get glimpses of the horror of normalcy. Each of these innocents on the street is engulfed by a terror of their own ordinariness. They would do anything to be unique.

Suddenly the staggering love bursts away from me like milk from a smashed glass.

The rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon, but only to hold a man's foot long enough to enable him to put the other somewhat higher.

I don't do anything to impress anyone, quite successfully I can tell you.

Dogs do tricks. Cats play tricks.

The principal task of a conductor is not to put himself in evidence but to disappear behind his functions as much as possible. We are pilots, not servants.

Genre categorization is a capitalist (rather than artistic) thing, a symptom of marketing and major-chain bookshelf placement.

Pop music is music that's made more accessible to people. And there's a certain lifestyle and everything that goes with it normally.

You should help a man to take up a burden, but you should not help him put it back down.

Do what you fear and your fear will die.

I very much dislike writing about myself or my work, and when pressed for autobiographical material can only give a bare chronological outline which contains no pertinent facts.

Logic should no longer be considered an elegant and learned accomplishment; it should take its place as an indispensable study for every well-informed person.