Few of us can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow make sense. The thought that the State has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable. And so the evidence has to be internally denied.

People do look to others for some leadership, and it's not bad for them to supply it when they feel that way.

He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid.

The best work that anybody ever writes is the work that is on the verge of embarrassing him, always.

Whoever is writing in the United States is using the American Dream as an ironical pole of his story. People elsewhere tend to accept, to a far greater degree anyway, that the conditions of life are hostile to mans pretensions.

Never fight fair with a stranger, boy. You'll never get out of the jungle that way.

A character is defined by the kinds of challenges he cannot walk away from. And by those he has walked away from that cause him remorse.