More and more we are taught something throughout our growing up, our education, and continuously, no matter how much we believe in this thing, something comes up that forces us to revise our entire belief system. No matter whom you idolize, it turns out that Louis Armstrong collected vast amounts of pornography.

Our generation has had no Great Depression, no Great War. Our war is spiritual. Our depression is our lives.

Besides, hysteria is only possible with an audience.

I didn't use anybody's story. I used the context and the structure of the situation. People were so, so desperate to tell their story and begin to digest their experience - like turning it into a story - that after the fist few weeks I could go with a pad and pencil and take notes. People didn't seem at all bothered by that.

Our real discoveries come from chaos, from going to the place that looks wrong and stupid and foolish.

There are worse things you can do to people you love than kill them.

A hotel, he told me, was a big house where a lot of people lived and ate and slept, but no one knew each other. He said that described most families in the outside world.