Why do people think that we’re degraded when we’re examining positions of degradation, or examining the cycle of our own degradation?

Writing can be bad and still be part of something good. That 'art' is really 'artifact,' Exhibit A, Exhibit B, of something else: a person's whole experience and life. And that always there's the chance that this will fail. That things will not work out.

Stalinism - or communism - is the only ideology Americans know how to demonise... no one knows what it is, it's just a synonym for the Empire of Evil.

I think what makes you feel so connected with certain writers isn't a matter of autobiographical detail, but that the emotions are real. The way some writers are able to channel themselves through the form.

It's going to be crazy. All eight teams here are good teams. Hopefully the atmosphere will be great because it's going to be great basketball.

I think the sheer fact of women talking, being, paradoxical, inexplicable, flip, self-destructiv e but above all else public is the most revolutionary thing in the world.

No one...can live in this heightened state of reflective receptivity forever. Because this empathy's involuntary, there's terror here. Loss of control, a seepage. Becoming someone else or worse: becoming nothing but the vibratory field between two people.