People in free societies don't have to fear the pathology of the state. We create our own frenzy, our own mass convulsions, driven by thinking machines that we have no final authority over. The frenzy is barely noticeable most of the time. It's simply how we live.

The cheesecake was smooth and lush, with the personality of a warm and well-to-do uncle who knows a hundred dirty jokes and will die of sexual exertions in the arms of his mistress.

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.

I am very unmusical. I can't carry a tune. I would never be able to play an instrument.

Why is it so hard to be serious, so easy to be too serious?

A mystery novel localizes the awesome force of the real death outside the book, winds it tightly in a plot.

Before pop art, there was such a thing as bad taste. Now there's kitsch, schlock, camp, and porn.