I've always seen myself in sentences. I begin to recognize myself, word by word, as I work through a sentence.

The true life is not reducible to words spoken or written, not by anyone, ever.

All plots tend to move deathward. This is the nature of plots.

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.

Money has lost its narrative quality the way painting did once upon a time. Money is talking to itself.

It was only after two years' work that it occurred to me that I was a writer. I had no particular expectation that the novel would ever be published, because it was sort of a mess. It was only when I found myself writing things I didn't realise I knew that I said, 'I'm a writer now.' The novel had become an incentive to deeper thinking. That's really what writing is—an intense form of thought.

I am not particularly distressed by the state of fiction or the role of the writer. The more marginal, perhaps ultimately the more trenchant and observant and finally necessary he'll become.