Good art is a form of prayer. It's a way to say what is not sayable.

There is a lack of context in contemporary education. And contemporary consideration - because we live in those interiorities so much. Especially young kids who live by surfing the Web.

I'm not a philosopher. I am the next thing to a jock, which is a novelist.

Oh, a bookshop. Why not pop in and buy a little Kant? And perhaps just a quarter-pound of Kafka. Don't bother to wrap it, thanks. I'll eat it here.

The importance to the world of what we scribblers write is in doubt, I would think.

I always want to read Gore Vidal's nonfiction. Because everything he writes is an essay and it's worth reading.

What I try to do is read stuff that won't deal with the dangerous dark things I hope I am writing about.