No sense of the irony of human experience, that we are the highest form of life on earth, and yet ineffably sad because we know what no other animal knows, that we must die.

If the world is where we hide from ourselves, what do we do when the world is no longer accessible? We invent a false name, invent a destiny, purchase a firearm through the mail.

He took pains to avoid self-depreciation, self-mockery, ambiguity, irony, subtlety, vulnerability, a civilized world-weariness and a tragic sense of history--the very things, he says, that are most natural to him.

The writer is the person who stands outside society, independent of affiliation and independent of influence.

I marched and I protested against the war in Vietnam, along with many, many thousands of others. But I never quite understood the bombs that were placed in science labs or office buildings.

In my experience, writing a novel tends to create its own structure, its own demands, its own language, its own ending. So for much of the period in which I'm writing, I'm waiting to understand what's going to happen next, and how and where it's going to happen. In some cases, fairly early in the process, I do know how a book will end. But most of the time, not at all, and in this particular case, many questions are still unanswered, even though I've been working for months.

How strange it is. We have these deep terrible lingering fears about ourselves and the people we love. Yet we walk around, talk to people, eat and drink. We manage to function. The feelings are deep and real. Shouldn't they paralyze us? How is it we can survive them, at least for a little while? We drive a car, we teach a class. How is it no one sees how deeply afraid we were, last night, this morning? Is it something we all hide from each other, by mutual consent? Or do we share the same secret without knowing it? Wear the same disguise?