If ideas are what feed serious literature and arresting language, who today is writing a novel of ideas (which can often mean comedy)? I think of Joshua Cohen. Who else?

The imagination has resources and intimations we don't even know about.

To be any sort of competent writer one must keep one's psychological distance from the supreme artists.

One reason writers write is out of revenge.

Nothing is so awesomely unfamiliar as the familiar that discloses itself at the end of a journey. Nothing shakes the heart so much as meeting-far, far away-what you last met at home.

The engineering is secondary to the vision.

very bright teeth as big and orderly as piano keys.