It’s a very American illness, the idea of giving yourself away entirely to the idea of working in order to achieve some sort of brass ring that usually involves people feeling some way about you – I mean, people wonder why we walk around feeling alienated and lonely and stressed out.

Most of us will still take nihilism over neanderthalism.

I believe I want adult sanity, which seems to me the only unalloyed form of heroism available today.

Ideally, each piece of art's its own unique object, and its evaluation's always present-tense.

Fiction is about what it is to be a human being.

The point of books is to combat loneliness.

This diagnosis can be done in about two lines. It doesn't engage anybody.