I am not comfortable with abstract writing, stories that look like essays: you have to see, I need to see.

Writing is a concentrated form of thinking.

I have only a bare working knowledge of the human brain but it's enough to make me proud to be an American.

In cities no one notices specific dying. Dying is a quality of the air. It's everywhere and nowhere.

Somehow pictures always lead to people as masses. Books belong to individuals.

The writer is driven by his conviction that some truths aren't arrived at so easily, that life is still full of mystery, that it might be better for you, Dear Reader, if you went back to the Living section of your newspaper because this is the dying section and you don't really want to be here.

In a repressive society, a writer can be deeply influential, but in a society that's filled with glut and repetition and endless consumption, the act of terror may be the only meaningful act.