Money has lost its narrative quality the way painting did once upon a time. Money is talking to itself.
I never wanted to change the world. Norman Mailer wanted to, he set himself the task of changing the consciousness of our age. And I think he came pretty close, in the 1960s, to actually managing to do it. But me? No, no, I never wanted anything like that. I'm not Maileresque.
What terrorists gain, novelists lose.
America can be saved only by what it's trying to destroy.
I was never either pro-culture or counter-culture. I was in a kind of middle state.
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.