It's true that some of us become better writers by living long enough. But this is also how we become worse writers. The trick is to die in between.

There were moments when she wasn't talking so much as fading into time, dropping back into some funnelled stretch of recent past.

Film is more than the twentieth-century art. It's another part of the twentieth-century mind. It's the world seen from inside. We've come to a certain point in the history of film. If a thing can be filmed, the film is implied in the thing itself. This is where we are. The twentieth century is on film. You have to ask yourself if there's anything about us more important than the fact that we're constantly on film, constantly watching ourselves.

The figure of the gunman in the window was inextricable from the victim and his history. This sustained Oswald in his cell. It gave him what he needed to live. The more time he spent in a cell, the stronger he would get. Everybody knew who he was now.

He thinks he's happy but it's just a nerve cell in his brain that's getting too much stimulation or too little stimulation.

There are no amateurs in the world of children.

Pain is just another form of information.