Off-camera lives are unverifiable.

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.

Bloomberg weighed three hundred pounds. This itself was historical. I revered his weight. It was an affirmation of humanity's reckless potential; it went beyond legend and returned through mist to the lovely folly of history. To weigh three hundred pounds. What devout vulgarity.

Because friends have to be brutally honest with each other. I'd feel terrible if I didn't tell you what I was thinking, especially at a time like this

Clouds are no deterrent. Clouds intensify the drama, trap and shape the light.

It's true that some of us become better writers by living long enough. But this is also how we become worse writers. The trick is to die in between.

In this century the writer has carried on a conversation with madness. We might almost say of the twentieth-century writer that he aspires to madness. Some have made it, of course, and they hold special places in our regard. To a writer, madness is a final distillation of self, a final editing down. It's the drowning out of false voices.