First you look for discipline and control. You want to exercise your will, bend the language your way, bend the world your way. You want to control the flow of impulses, images, words, faces, ideas. But there's a higher place, a secret aspiration. You want to let go. You want to lose yourself in language, become a carrier or messenger.

Stories are consoling, fiction is one of the consolation prizes for having lived in the world.

Just because it's on the radio doesn't mean we have to suspend belief in the evidence of our senses.

Maybe when we die, the first thing we'll say is 'I know this feeling. I was here before'.

Ecology is boring for the same reason that destruction is fun.

Writing is a form of personal freedom. It frees us from the mass identity we see in the making all around us. In the end, writers will write not to be outlaw heroes of some underculture but mainly to save themselves, to survive as individuals.

When he died he would not end. The world would end.