That's what tyrants do, I guess. They make you covet their attention; they make you confuse attention for mercy.

Every returning New Yorker asks the question: Is this still my city? I have a ready answer, cloaked in obstinate despair: It is. And if it's not, I will love it all the more. I will love it to the point where it becomes mine again.

I just want fiction to remain a vital force for entertainment and not just for contemplation. Both things can exist.

Also, I've spent an entire week without reading any books or talking about them too loudly. I'm learning to work my apparat's screen, the colourful pulsating mosaic of it, the fact that it knows every last stinking detail about the world, whereas my books only know the minds of their authors.

We're people of the Orient. We know everything. And what we don't know, we can sense.

Remember this... develop a sense of nostalgia for something, or you'll never figure out what's important.

I'm the fortieth ugliest man in this bar. But so what! So what!... Isn't this how people used to fall in love?