I started appreciating and valuing different things. Some things just became insufferable to me, and not just literature. I used to like horror movies and now I couldn't stand them.

What I don't like about America is not necessarily an American thing; it's a capitalist thing. This is the Vatican of capitalism.

The balls do not make a writer.

Cliché activates the comfortable mental laziness, we sort of revert to the domain of the already-familiar, what we have already imagined so that it doesn't seem that bad.

I've never had a stupid student in my life. I never look down on my students. I never thought, "Look at these people." I might argue with them and I think that some of them might have misconceptions - that they might be infected by the intellectual laziness that is the foundation of American popular culture, and of capitalism, if you wish. But part of my job as a teacher is to work with that - against that.

The incessant perpetuation of collective fantasies makes people crave the truth and nothing but the truth - reality is the fastest American commodity.

I cannot stand that whole game of confession, that is: Here I have sinned, now I'm confessing my sins, and describing my path of sin and then in the act of confession I beg for your forgiveness and redemption.