The smoke alarm went off in the hallway upstairs, either to let us know the battery had just died or because the house was on fire.

I think that the massive, overarching, interconnected systems of technology tend to make us a little insecure, somewhat pliable, and susceptible to half-beliefs.

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

What we are reluctant to touch often seems the very fabric of our salvation.

The cheesecake was smooth and lush, with the personality of a warm and well-to-do uncle who knows a hundred dirty jokes and will die of sexual exertions in the arms of his mistress.

Naturally a direct comparison of terrorist and novelist is complete nonsense. But there was once a time when the novelist also had some influence on how his contemporaries thought, the way they saw the world, the way they lived.

People say great art is immortal. I say there's something mortal in it. It carries a glimpse of death.