I would never write in response to what I believe the public wanted or needed.

We surrounded ourselves with smoke and loud noise. That's the way we chose to live. I'm prepared to defend it.

Making things difficult for the reader is less an attack on the reader than it is on the age and its facile knowledge-market.

A shrewd person would one day start a religion based on coincidence, if he hasn't already, and make a million.

When I read obituaries I always note the age of the deceased. Automatically I relate this figure to my own age. Four years to go, I think. Nine more years. Two years and I'm dead. The power of numbers is never more evident than when we use them to speculate on the time of our dying.

Perhaps we've invented conspiracies for our own psychic well-being, to heal ourselves.

There's never a dearth of reasons to shoot at the President.