Why is it so hard to be serious, so easy to be too serious?

Isn't death the boundary we need? Doesn't it give a precious texture to life, a sense of definition? You have to ask yourself whether anything you do in this life would have beauty and meaning without the knowledge you carry of a final line, a border or limit.

I think fiction comes from everything you've ever done, and said, and dreamed, and imagined. It comes from everything you've read and haven't read... I think my work comes out of the culture of the world around me. I think that's where my language comes from.

Plot a murder, you're saying. But every plot is a murder in effect. To plot is to die, whether we know it or not.

holes are interesting. there are books about holes.

I used to think it was possible for an artist to alter the inner life of the culture. Now bomb-makers and gunmen have taken that territory.

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