why something and not nothing? why music and not noise?

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.

Through meditation, difficult thoughts and emotions may well rise up. And through practice, you can meet such emotions with kindness, listen to them, explore them and then really let them go.

Through the waters spilled by the spring, I was remade. Forth I fared, a new plant with new leaves in a new time. The stars were there, and I was set to climb.

Don't imitate. Find your own writing voice and hone it until it is yours alone.

I cannot call somebody ‘hard-working’ knowing only that they read and write. Even if ‘all night long’ is added, I cannot say it – not until I know the focus of all this energy.

Because we live in an industrialized, fast-paced world that prefers that the soul remain asleep.

With studio work, I'm always the bottom man on the totem pole.

There are not many roles where women are really active.

It would be immoral to walk away from the consequences of our actions, leaving behind anarchy and civil war in Iraq.

Macaulay is well for awhile, but one wouldn't live under Niagara.

Every other man is a piece of myself, for I am a part and a member of mankind.