When you are lonely, writing can keep you company. It is also a form of self-compensation, a way of making up for things—as opposed to making things up—that did not quite happen.

I've never really liked L.A., because of its sprawl.

The ideal is to feel at home anywhere, everywhere.

It's this thing that's going on all the time - aging. Paul Auster quotes the poet George Opren on growing old: "What a strange thing to happen to a little boy." Which I think is so profound.

I think I do have a sort of terrible propensity for boredom and for being bored, even though I am absolutely of the opinion that one shouldn't be bored and that there is no excuse for it and that it is a personal failing.

One's happiness is very largely a question of state of mind rather than the world you are looking at.

In foreign countries, when people see what Donald Trump is saying on Twitter since the election and seeing what he's saying in these calls with foreign leaders, they take everything very seriously and they take everything very literally.