As belief shrinks from the world, it is more necessary than ever that someone believe. Wild-eyed men in caves. Nuns in black. Monks who do not speak. We are left to believe. Fools, children. Those who have abandoned belief must still believe in us. They are sure they are right not to believe but they know belief must not fade completely. Hell is when no one believes.

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

The true life is not reducible to words spoken or written, not by anyone, ever.

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

Too much has been forgotten in the name of memory.

I think more than writers, the major influences on me have been European movies, jazz, and Abstract Expressionism.

Why are homosexuals addicted to soap opera? Because our lives are a vivid situation.