True terror is a language and a vision. There is a deep narrative structure to terrorist acts, and they infiltrate and alter consciousness in ways that writers used to aspire to.

In this century the writer has carried on a conversation with madness. We might almost say of the twentieth-century writer that he aspires to madness. Some have made it, of course, and they hold special places in our regard. To a writer, madness is a final distillation of self, a final editing down. It's the drowning out of false voices.

Insanity's so personal. It's hard to know who shares our secrets.

Time is a corporate asset now. It belongs to the free market system. The present is harder to find... The future becomes insistent.

Digital clocks took the 'space' out of time.

There are times when you want to stop working at faith and just be washed in a blowing wind that tells you everything.

I think literature has lost it's power. Great novels continue to be written, but they are no longer changing the world.