We seem to believe it is possible to ward off death by following rules of good grooming.

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.

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.

Human existence had to have a deeper source than our own dank fluids. Dank or rank. There had to be a force behind it, a principal being who was and is and ever shall be.

Good literature is a lifeboat! Every time you feel you are sinking, jump on it!

It takes people being alone in front of the computer at three in the morning to write opinions about movies, apparently.

A lot of people have a dissatisfaction or an anger in them, so as soon as something goes awry, they flip out.

The preaching is part of the reason I don't go to church. Plus, I don't know, it was never part of my tradition.

You don't need to be recluse and stay away from people. But you have to set aside a lot of time for stillness. That is the only place there is real fulfillment. You need to slow it down.

Girls liking bad boys is the cookie jar complex. When somebody tells you you can't have a cookie, you want a cookie. But I live in a bad-boy world, artistically. All the jazz boys are bad boys.

It might be inevitable that we have to confront the idea that our destiny is to be one world with one language.

I've dealt with a few method actors, and I don't know if should say this, but I think it's a bunch of nonsense. I think it's film acting and you just have to be on when the camera is rolling.

In every kind of endeavor, there are ample opportunities for extra effort. Grab those opportunities, embrace that extra effort and transform ordinary mediocrity into bright and shining excellence.

Grateful for his mistakes, man should be the gods, because by overcoming the faults the stronger force is developed.