The future is always a wholeness, a sameness. We're all tall and happy there,' she said. 'This is why the future fails. It always fails. It can never be the cruel happy place we want to make it.

Explain me to myself, you’ll make me choke on my lunch. Feel sympathy for me, I’ll puke monkey blood on your understated shoes.

It is all falling indelibly into the past.

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

That's what in theory differentiates a writer from everyone else. You see and hear more clearly.

It's healthier to reject certain cautions than fall in line.

I marched and I protested against the war in Vietnam, along with many, many thousands of others. But I never quite understood the bombs that were placed in science labs or office buildings.