The term itself--my life--is a desperate overstatement.

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.

Those who love you the most, let you bend your notes

Polls are frequently taken to try to tease out or determine likely directions and trends, but once taken, they belong to the past, requiring that new polls be taken.

When the little dog snarls, the big dog does not connect the snarl with himself, simply fancying that the little dog must be uncomfortable.

Oftentimes the most produced and synth-tastic songs are the ones that end up sounding the best acoustic.

Listening to others, especially those with whom we disagree, tests our own ideas and beliefs. It forces us to recognize, with humility, that we don't have a monopoly on the truth.

The scientific nature of the ordinary man is to go out and do the best you can.

No one is ever really dead unless we find the body.

Whatsoever thy birth, Thou wert a beautiful thought, and softly bodied forth.

The reader has to be creative when he's reading. He has to try to make the thing alive. A good reader has to do a certain amount of work when he is reading.

I've always looked at myself and criticized myself first, and that's the way I'm always going to be.