I live in an apartment building built in 1925, and it hasn't been heavily renovated, so I feel very much connected to that time and what went on in that place.

Really interesting novels, they always are so demanding of you on some level that you don't fall asleep.

I always lived in old buildings, and I thought about who lived here before. You'd have to be oblivious not to.

I never wore a watch. I always depend on public clocks, and stores have clocks, but that is strange.

The click [of a light switch] is the modern triumphal clarion proceeding us through life, announcing our entry into every lightless room.

The funny thing is, nationalism only could have come about in Europe after the invention of printing. You could have this thing that was a book in a vernacular language, and you could imagine there were other readers of this book who you couldn't see, but they were a theoretical union of readers who all use the same language. That is kind of a prerequisite for a national fantasy. You need that thing, and it's a strange thing.

A picture story just doesn't run like a film. It doesn't have 24 frames per second. It doesn't deal with this illusion of movement.