Every sentence has a truth waiting at the end of it and the writer learns how to know it when he finally gets there. On one level this truth is the swing of the sentence, the beat and poise, but down deeper it's the integrity of the writer as he matches with the language. I've always seen myself in sentences. I begin to recognize myself, word by word, as I work through a sentence. The language of my books has shaped me as a man. There's a moral force in a sentence when it comes out right. It speaks the writer's will to live.

I hate my life. I'm at the point where I want to hear about other people's lives. it's like switching from fiction to biography.

Prayer is a practical strategy, the gaining of temporal advantage in the capital markets of Sin and Remission.

I was never either pro-culture or counter-culture. I was in a kind of middle state.

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.

I saw a photograph of a wedding conducted by Reverend Moon of the Unification Church. I wanted to understand this event, and the only way to understand it was to write about it.

It occurred to me that eating is the only form of professionalism most people ever attain.