What we are reluctant to touch often seems the very fabric of our salvation.

She became confused when she stepped onto an escalator that wasn't working.

Fear is self-awareness raised to a higher level.

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.

There's a curious knot that binds novelists and terrorists...Years ago I used to think it was possible for a novelist to alter the inner life of the culture. Now bomb-makers and gunmen have taken that territory. They make raids on human consciousness. What writers used to do before we were all incorporated.

...Because what's the meaning of doing dishes if you're not driven by something beyond necessity.

In our world we sleep and eat the image and pray to it and wear it too.