In this country there is a universal third person, the man we all want to be. Advertising has discovered this man. It uses him to express the possibilities open to the consumer. To consume in America is not to buy; it is to dream. Advertising is the suggestion that the dream of entering the third person singular might possibly be fulfilled.

Only a catastrophe gets our attention. We want them, we depend on them. As long as they happen somewhere else.

I see contemporary violence as a kind of sardonic response to the promise of consumer fulfilment in America.

It was the time of year, the time of day, for a small insistent sadness to pass into the texture of things. Dusk, silence, iron chill. Something lonely in the bone.

I watch movies occasionally, and I watch documentaries. Virtually nothing else.

Doesn't our knowledge of death make life more precious?' What good is a preciousness based on fear and anxiety? It's an anxious quivering thing

Prayer is a practical strategy, the gaining of temporal advantage in the capital markets of Sin and Remission.