A writer's life is so hazardous that anything he does is bad for him. Anything that happens to him is bad: failure's bad, success is bad; impoverishment is bad, money is very, very bad. Nothing good can happen... Except the act of writing.

Every major work of art is a transgression, but the artist is not necessarily, by nature, a transgressor.

Movies are too literal.

We're always attracted to the edges of what we are, out by the edges where it's a little raw and nervy.

The writer isn't made in a vacuum. Writers are witnesses. The reason we need writers is because we need witnesses to this terrifying century.

I lived in New York for a couple months. It seemed to me at first an incredibly clean place with well-dressed people and washed cars and bright-painted red-and-yellow streetcars and white buildings.

I thought I would lose, so I didn't prepare a speech.