It occurred to me that eating is the only form of professionalism most people ever attain.

He speaks in your voice, American, and there's a shine in his eye that's halfway hopeful.

I've come to think of Europe as a hardcover book, America as the paperback version.

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

What did it mean, the first time, a thinking creature looked deeply into another's eyes? Did it take a hundred thousand years before this happened or it was the first thing they did, transcendingly, the thing that made them higher, made them modern, the gaze that demonstrates we are lonely in our souls?

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.

There are no amateurs in the world of children.