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

Writing is a concentrated form of thinking.

What good is knowledge if it just floats in the air? It goes from computer to computer. It changes and grows every second of every day. But nobody actually knows anything.

There's a connection between the advances that are made in technology and the sense of primitive fear people develop in response to it.

I think literature has lost it's power. Great novels continue to be written, but they are no longer changing the world.

When I read obituaries I always note the age of the deceased. Automatically I relate this figure to my own age. Four years to go, I think. Nine more years. Two years and I'm dead. The power of numbers is never more evident than when we use them to speculate on the time of our dying.

Hardship makes the world obscure.