It proposed that human beings, by the act of making witness, warranted times and places for their existence other than the time and place they were living through.

Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.

Like art and politics, gangsterism is a very important avenue of assimilation into society.

The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like.

Congress is so beholden to the money that any solution in the general interest will be frustrated and subverted by the corporate interests who feel they will be damaged by progress, fair play and justice.

So that individuation may be compared to a pyramid in that it is only achieved by the placement of the top stone… The Jews, Ford said. They ain't like anyone else I know. There goes you theory up shits creek. He smiled.

We make a mistake to condescend to the past as if it were preparatory to our own time.