When I work I have a sculptor's sense of the shape of the words I'm making. I use a machine with larger than average letters: the bigger the better.

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.

So then, let "Deserved" be written on the door of hell, but on the door of Heaven and life, "The free gift" (68).

While making art you should just do what is in your heart.

Design has to work. Art does not.

Music-making as a means of getting money is hell

My earliest memories are doing commercials and TV.

I did a lot of theater in the South side of Chicago.

...it is impossible for a genuine people's revolution in any country to win victory without various forms of help from the international revolutionary forces.

Concentration is the magic key that opens the door to accomplishment.

Cruel children, crying babies, All grow up as geese and gabies, Hated, as their age increases, By their nephews and their nieces.

Government is necessary, not because man is naturally bad... but because man is by nature more individualistic than social.