My attitudes aren't directed toward characters at all. I don't feel sympathetic toward some characters, unsympathetic toward others. I don't love some characters, feel contempt for others. They have attitudes; I don't.

All plots tend to move deathward. This is the nature of plots.

I felt Joyce was an influence on my fiction, but in a very general way, as a kind of inspiration and a model for the beauty of language.

It is so much simpler to bury reality than it is to dispose of dreams

Music is dangerous in so many ways. It's the most dangerous thing in the world.

Even when you self-destruct, you want to fail more, lose more, die more than others, stink more than others.

One connection I see between novelists and terrorists is that we both attempt to alter consciousness.