There's a certain kind of neurological makeup that goes along with being a writer, and having been in the room with a few other writers at the same time, it's rather wearing to be around. And it does - there is a kind of hypervigilance about it. Unfortunately it's got disadvantages. If you turn that hypervigilance on yourself and, for instance, whether or not you have a pimple on the end of your nose, it can get really depressing.

There is no hatred in my love for you. Only a sadness I feel all the more strongly for my inability to explain or describe it.

God, what a ghastly enterprise to be in, though-and what an odd way to achieve success. I'm an exhibitionist who wants to hide, but is unsuccessful at hiding; therefore, somehow I succeed.

And when he came to, he was flat on his back on the beach in the freezing sand, and it was raining out of a low sky, and the tide was way out.

Nuclear weapons and TV have simply intensified the consequences of our tendencies, upped the stakes.

Lonely people tend, rather, to be lonely because they decline to bear the psychic costs of being around other humans. They are allergic to people. People affect them too strongly.

Hal Incandenza has an almost obsessive dislike for deLint, whom he tells Mario he sometimes cannot quite believe is even real, and tries to get to the side of, to see whether deLint has a true z coordinate or is just a cutout or projection.