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

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.

I am ashamed every day, and more ashamed the next.

The term itself--my life--is a desperate overstatement.

I've always seen myself in sentences. I begin to recognize myself, word by word, as I work through a sentence.

Stories are consoling, fiction is one of the consolation prizes for having lived in the world.

Look at those numbers running. Money makes time. It used to be the other way around. Clock time accelerated the rise of capitalism. People stopped thinking about eternity. They began to concentrate on hours, measurable hours,man-hours, using labor more efficiently.