Only a catastrophe gets our attention. We want them, we depend on them. As long as they happen somewhere else.

There are two categories of writers, it could be said: The author who is just a voice, and the one who is also creating a picture. I belong to the latter, because I have an acute visual sense.

I felt myself getting whiter... What does it mean to become white? How does it feel to see Death in the flesh, come to gather you in?

I understand there are some men who are only half here. Let's not say men. Let's say people. People who are more or less obscure at times.

Fame and secrecy are the high and low ends of the same fascination.

The novel is the dream release, the suspension of reality that history needs to escape its own brutal confinements.

I see contemporary violence as a kind of sardonic response to the promise of consumer fulfilment in America.